So be it; Chronos, go thy ways;
Our friend grows old and full of days;
His frame may bend to Time’s control,
But Time is servant to his soul.
His drama on the world’s wide stage,
Now in the last calm scene, old age,
Has been throughout legitimate,
In motive true, performance great.
Whoever thus fulfils his part
Achieves the uttermost of art;
Who thus the scene of life has trod
Pleases the Manager—his God.
Or soon or late, exeunt all—
The bell will ring, the curtain fall,
And we, the actors, put away
The masking garments of the play.
When we from off the boards have passed,
And every light is out at last,
We’ll leave the theater and go
Where real life replaces show.
Play out the play! and be content
To wait for that supreme event;
Dear Murdoch! master, father, friend,—
Star on! still bright’ning to the end!
THE CONCORD SEER.
THE Transcendentalist—he now transcends
The cloud of death to join exalted friends.
The Saadi of the West, the Saint, the Sage,
The north-sprung Plato of an un-Greek age,
Hath changed his habitation, and his ghost
Takes note authentic of the unknown coast.
Ah, joy serene! there doth he recognize
Congenial souls foreknown “polite and wise”:—
Two bards were first to hail his risen wraith,
One sang the Psalm of Life, one that of Death;
Then mystic Hawthorne took his willing hand,
As Vergil Dante’s in the Shadow Land;
Now haply doth his converse reconcile
Momentous discords with redeemed Carlyle;
Perhaps in Soul’s consortable domain
He meets the shade of erudite Montaigne;
Or German-Grecian Goethe shows the way
To Fields Elysian where the Ancients stray;—
By some celestial brook of lucent flow,
Where plane-trees with immortal verdure grow,
May sit, discoursing calm philosophies,
The Concord Seer, with argute Socrates.
THE POET OF CLOVERNOOK.
READ at the Celebration of Alice Cary’s birthday,
to the children of the Public Schools of
Cincinnati, April 26, 1880.