Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
Desecration
By Richard Watson Gilder (18441909)T
Outworn his mortal frame.
He hath fought well the fight,
And won a deathless name.
And flowers to deck the hearse.
The tribute of a tear
To his immortal verse.
Who heard, for pleasure wept.
His were our joy and pain:
He sang—our sorrow slept.
Shall such high songs have birth:
Gone is the harp he bore
Forever from the earth.
Above his precious dust:
Child of the heavenly powers,—
Divine, and pure, and just.
Doth hoot the hornèd owl,
Beneath the pale moon’s light
The human ghouls will prowl.
Within the sacred gloom,
To do our poet wrong—
To break the sealèd tomb?
That pities not, nor halts
By thoughtless night or day—
But, O more sordid-false,
To whom his spirit moved;
The brother he held dear;
The woman that he loved.