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
Mors Triumphalis
By Richard Watson Gilder (18441909)I
While lo! with his hand on his harp the old bard is undone!
One false note, then he stammers, he sobs like a child, he is failing,
And the song that so bravely began ends in discord and wailing.
Shall the sun, then, be scorned by the planets, the tree by the limb!
These bardlings, these mimics, these echoes, these shadows at play,
While he only is real:—they shine but as motes in his day!
But one secret he never could teach, and they never have caught,—
The soul of his songs, that goes sighing like wind through the reeds,
And thrills men, and moves them to terror, to prayer, and to deeds.
Why, ’twas he who once startled the world with a cry from his heart;
And he held it entranced in a life-song, all music, all love;
If now it grow faint and grow still, they have called him above.
Surely never from you, ye who mock,—for his footstool unmeet;
E’en his song left unsung had more power than the note ye prolong,
And one sweep of his harp-strings outpassioned the height of your song.
Arises. He breathes now; he sings; oh, again he is free.
He has flung from his flesh, from his spirit, their shackles accursed,
And he pours all his heart, all his life, in one passionate burst.
For he sings of a God that made all, and is all that was made;
Who is maker of love, and of hate, and of peace, and of strife;
Smiles a world into life; frowns a hell, that yet thrills with his life.
Of the day when the sun shall be withered, and shrunken, and cold;
When the stars, and the moon, and the sun,—all their glory o’erpast,—
Like apples that shrivel and rot, shall drop into the Vast.
Mid systems that vanish or live in the lilt of his rhyme;
And through making and marring of races, and worlds, still he sings
One theme, that o’er all and through all his wild music outrings;—
Whatever the face that is turned to us out of the void;
Be it cursing or blessing; or night, or the light of the sun;
Be it ill, be it good; be it life, be it death, it is O
In atom, and world; in the bursting of fruit and of flower;
The laughter of children, and roar of the lion untamed;
And the stars in their courses—one name that can never be named.
Though he leans with his hand on his harp, now indeed he is dead!
But the swan-song he sang shall for ever and ever abide
In the heart of the world, with the winds and the murmuring tide.