John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Personal PoemsIn Remembrance of Joseph Sturge
I
Across the charmëd bay
Whose blue waves keep with Capri’s silver fountains
Perpetual holiday,
His gold-bought masses given;
And Rome’s great altar smokes with gums to sweeten
Her foulest gift to Heaven.
The court of England’s queen
For the dead monster so abhorred while living
In mourning garb is seen.
By lone Edgbaston’s side
Stands a great city in the sky’s sad raining,
Bareheaded and wet-eyed!
Save the low funeral tread,
Or voice of craftsman whispering to his neighbor
The good deeds of the dead.
Rose from the lips of sin;
No mitred priest swung back the heavenly portals
To let the white soul in.
In the low hovel’s door,
And prayers went up from all the dark by-places
And Ghettos of the poor.
The vagrant of the street,
The human dice wherewith in games of battle
The lords of earth compete,
All swelled the long lament,
Of grateful hearts, instead of marble, shaping
His viewless monument!
In the long heretofore,
A heart more loyal, warm, and true, and tender,
Has England’s turf closed o’er.
No crash of brazen wail,
The murmurous woe of kindreds, tongues, and peoples
Swept in on every gale.
And from the tropic calms
Of Indian islands in the sun-smit shadows
Of Occidental palms;
And harbors of the Finn,
Where war’s worn victims saw his gentle presence
Come sailing, Christ-like, in,
To link the hostile shores
Of severing seas, and sow with England’s daisies
The moss of Finland’s moors.
Who in the vilest saw
Some sacred crypt or altar of a temple
Still vocal with God’s law;
As from its prison cell,
Praying for pity, like the mournful crying
Of Jonah out of hell.
But a fine sense of right,
And Truth’s directness, meeting each occasion
Straight as a line of light.
In the same channel ran:
The crystal clearness of an eye kept single
Shamed all the frauds of man.
He joined to courage strong,
And love outreaching unto all God’s creatures
With sturdy hate of wrong.
In him were so allied
That they who judged him by his strength or weakness
Saw but a single side.
By failure and by fall;
Still a large faith in human-kind he cherished,
And in God’s love for all.
No more shall seem at strife;
And death has moulded into calm completeness
The statue of his life.
His dust to dust is laid,
In Nature’s keeping, with no pomp of marble
To shame his modest shade.
Beneath its smoky veil,
Hard by, the city of his love is swinging
Its clamorous iron flail.
And the sweet heaven above,—
The fitting symbols of a life of duty
Transfigured into love!