I hear the lonely shepherd’s song
Flow down the green and mossy vale,
And westward all the calm night long
The restless sea gulls sail.
I sometimes turn towards the stars
With sudden shock of glad surprise,
And half believe these island bars
Are but the gates to Paradise.
[At Key’s Grave.]
I stood one summer, friend, beside
The foam waves of a distant sea
That muttered all the summer through
A low sweet threnody.
A mournful song was ever on
The lips that it were death to kiss,
A song for those who died as died
The brave at ancient Salamis.
A thousand graves lay in the trough
Of that great ocean of the East,
A thousand souls fled through its foam
Towards the starlit land of peace.
And for each ship-wrecked soul that slept
Beneath the dark inconstant waves
The wind gave songs in memory
Of men true-hearted, pure and brave.
But I have stood, sweet-singer, by
Thy lonely, unmarked grave to-day,
And all the songs thy memory got
Came from the branches in their sway.
Ah, peace! ah, love! ah, friendship true!
No wreath rests here wove by your hands
To mark the Poet’s silent tomb.
As tombs are marked in other lands.
But in my noon-day dream there came
From the fair bosom of the hills
The voice of some sweet psalmist, thus—
“’Tis so God wills, ’tis so God wills.”