James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
May 3Stanzas to the Memory of Thomas Hood
By Bartholomew Simmons (d. 1850)This joyous, May-eyed morrow,
The gentlest child that ever Mirth
Gave to be reared by Sorrow!
’Tis hard—while rays half green, half gold,
Through vernal bowers are burning,
And streams their diamond-mirrors hold
To Summer’s face returning—
To say we’re thankful that his sleep
Shall never more be lighter,
In whose sweet-tongued companionship
Stream, bower, and beam grew brighter!
His soul gave out each feature
Of elemental love—each hue
And grace of golden Nature—
The deeper still beneath it all
Lurked the keen jags of anguish;
The more the laurels clasped his brow
Their poison made it languish.
Seemed it that like the nightingale
Of his own mournful singing,
The tenderer would his song prevail
While most the thorn was stinging.
Did fount bring freshness deeper,
Than that his placid rest this morn
Has brought the shrouded sleeper.
That rest may lap his weary head
Where charnels choke the city,
Or where, mid woodlands, by his bed
The wren shall wake its ditty;
But near or far, while evening’s star
Is dear to hearts regretting,
Around that spot admiring Thought
Shall hover, unforgetting.
Is, after all, ideal,
Or in the Immaterial furled
Alone resides the real,
Freed one! there’s a wail for thee this hour
Through thy loved Elves’ dominions;
Hushed is each tiny trumpet-flower,
And droopeth Ariel’s pinions;
Even Puck, dejected, leaves his swing,
To plan, with fond endeavor,
What pretty buds and dews shall keep
Thy pillow bright for ever.
The race of early childhood—
Shall miss thy whims of frolic wit,
That in the summer wild-wood,
Or by the Christmas hearth, were hailed,
And hoarded as a treasure
Of undecaying merriment
And ever-changing pleasure.
Things from thy lavish humor flung
Profuse as scents, are flying
This kindling morn, when blooms are born
As fast as blooms are dying.
The minstrel’s mightiest magic,
With sadness to subdue the soul,
Or thrill it with the tragic.
Now listening Aram’s fearful dream,
We see beneath the willow
That dreadful Thing, or watch him steal,
Guilt-lighted, to his pillow.
Now with thee roaming ancient groves,
We watch the woodman felling
The funeral elm, while through its boughs
The ghostly wind comes knelling.
In solitary places,
Shalt thou no more steal, as of yore,
To meet her white embraces?
Is there no purple in the rose
Henceforward to thy senses?
For thee have dawn and daylight’s close
Lost their sweet influences?
No!—by the mental night untamed
Thou took’st to Death’s dark portal,
The joy of the wide universe
Is now to thee immortal!
With thy new-conquered quiet!—
This stunning hell of wheels that pour
With princes to their riot!
Loud clash the crowds—the busy clouds
With thunder-noise are shaken,
While pale, and mute, and cold, afar
Thou liest, men-forsaken.
Hot life reeks on, nor recks that one
—The playful, human-hearted—
Who lent its clay less earthiness,
Is just from earth departed.