It shamed and hushed the scoffers’ ribald scorn,
It charmed the city’s lucre-loving throng,
And melted all with Calvary’s lofty song.
No painted web of rhetoric he wove;
His speech was all sincerity and love,
But sharp and pointed as a surgeon’s lance.
Tender his touch, and searching his quick glance;
A living faith to every work he brought,
And lived the simple doctrines that he taught.
The Man of Sorrows ever was his theme,
Who taught by Galilee and Jordan’s stream;
So in the Temple Jewish rabbis heard
The wondrous Christ-Child speak his Father’s word.
The admiring world oft tempted him in vain,
And offered greater guerdon than his chair,
In posts of honor and in golden gain,
To him gay bubbles floating on the air.
Far up the Mount he heard the warning cry—
“Excelsior!” the watchword of the sky,
The solemn mandate of Eternity.
After long life of toil he sighed for rest,
Like homing-dove returning to her nest
Crooning her “La Paloma” in her flight—
Duty his pole-star guiding him aright;
He leaned his faint head on his Master’s breast,
And his great soul was happy with the Blessed.
TO LEONORA.
“One fatal remembrance—one sorrow that throws
Its bleak shade alike o’er our joys and our woes.”
—Moore.
The troubled spell is o’er,
The wild delirious dream of bliss is broke;
A spirit whispered to me as I woke,
“No more—oh sleep no more,
For love has died upon a dart whose sting
Sped on a feather plucked from his own wing.”
Oh, bright divinity,
Bold and unfettered as the eagle’s wing,
Oh soul of noblest impulses, the spring,
And chainless as the sea,
Why didst thou lend my sky thy glorious light
Only to quench it in a blacker night!
Oh, I have loved to bow
Before thy shrine and burn rich incense there,
Immaculate spirit of the upper air,
Nor rose sincerer vow
Nor sweeter wreaths in Dian’s temples hung,
When on the Paphian myrtles Sappho sung.