John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Personal PoemsBryant on his Birthday
W
The rounded beauty of his song;
Who weighs him from his life apart
Must do his nobler nature wrong.
With charms to common sight denied,—
The marvellous gift he shares alone
With him who walked on Rydal-side;
Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears;
We speak his praise who wears to-day
The glory of his seventy years.
Let happy lips his songs rehearse;
His life is now his noblest strain,
His manhood better than his verse!
Its cunning keeps at life’s full span;
But, dimmed and dwarfed, in times like these,
The poet seems beside the man!
The singer’s wreath, the painter’s meed,
Let our names perish, if thereby
Our country may be saved and freed!