The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued
90Too tight for all expressin',
Tell mother see how metters stood.
An' gin 'em both her blessin'.
Then her red come back like the tide
Down to the Bay o' Fundy,
95An' all I know is they was cried
In meetin' come nex' Sunday.
ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COMMEMORATION
JULY 21, 1865
I.
Weak-winged is song,
Nor aims at that clear-ethered height
Whither the brave deed climbs for light:
We seem to do them wrong,
5Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse
Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse,
Our trivial song to honor those who come
With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum,
And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire,
10Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire:
Yet sometimes feathered words are strong,
A gracious memory to buoy up and save
From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common grave
Of the unventurous throng.
II.
15To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back
Her wisest Scholars, those who understood
The deeper teaching of her mystic tome,
And offered their fresh lives to make it good:
No lore of Greece or Rome,
20No science peddling with the names of things,
Or reading stars to find inglorious fates,
Can lift our life with wings
Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many waits,
And lengthen out our dates
25With that clear fame whose memory sings
In manly hearts to come, and nerves them and dilates:
Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all!
Not such the trumpet-call
Of thy diviner mood,
30That could thy sons entice
From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest
Of those half-virtues which the world calls best,
Into War's tumult rude:
But rather far that stern device
35The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood
In the dim; unventured wood,
The VERITAS that lurks beneath
The letter's unprolific sheath,
Life of whate'er makes life worth living,
40Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food,
One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving.
III.