We mused, with much-expectant smile,
On that strange life afar,
Flower-girt, in yon Pacific isle,
Whereto an alien star
Had drawn thee from thy northern home,
Scourged by a greyer, chillier foam,
Yet dear as the white bar
Whose snowy break home-haven marks
To battered shore-returning barks.
And now across the sundering seas,
Delayed, unwelcome, dread,
Comes news that breaks our dreamful ease.
The Great Romancer dead?
It comes like an unnatural blight.
That sunny vision quenched in night,
That subtle spirit fled?
One-half our best soul-life seems gone
Out like a spark with Stevenson.
Enough for fame that hand had wrought,
But not enough for those
Who dreamed his dream, who thought his thought,
And grieve that so should close
Fresh-opened doors to Faëryland
Before the poet-Prospero's wand
Had wrought the spells he chose.
Without him amaranth-blooms to cull
The world looks Stygian now, and dull.
Teller of Tales, those southern folk
Their Tusitala hailed.
Samoan hearts may mourn the stroke.
We, who must leave unscaled,
Save in fond fancy, that high peak
Where he is tombed, who, though flesh-weak
In spirit never failed
More than his stalwart fathers,—we
Send half our hearts across the sea.
The lighthouse-builder raised no light
That shall outshine the flame
Of genius in its mellowest might
That beacons him to fame.
And Pala's peak shall do yet more
Than the great light at Skerryvore
To magnify his name,
Who mourned, when stricken flesh would tire,
That he was weaker than his sire.
Teller of Tales! Of tales so told
That all the world must list.
Story sheer witchery, style pure gold,
Yet with that tricksy twist
Of Puck-like mockery which betrays
The wanderer in this world's mad maze,
Not blindly optimist,
Who wooes Romance, yet sadly knows
That Life's sole growth is not the Rose.
Dreamer of dreams! Such dreams as draw
Glad through the Ivory Gate,
In rapt and visionary awe,
The soul alert, elate;
Eblis obscure, Elysium dim,
And a strange Limbo of wild whim,
Upon us seem to wait,
In solemn pomp, when willing thrall
To him who held the keys of all.
Thinker of thoughts, fresh, poignant, fine,
Wherein no wit may trace
That burthen of the Philistine,
Chill, barren Commonplace.
Who hath not felt the subtle stroke
Which can in one choice phrase invoke
The soul of charm and grace,
Haunting the ear like an old rhyme,
A cherished memory for all time?
No more, no more! We shall not see
Again the glorious show;
No more will wake the wizardry,
Nor the charmed music flow.
Samoa's silence holds it hushed,
The voice whereat our cheeks have flushed
A hundred times; and lo!
For happy hours, for haunted days,
We can but pay with sad, proud praise!