Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
Descriptive Poems: I. Personal: Rulers; Statesmen; WarriorsDaniel Webster
Oliver Wendell Holmes (18091894)W
A nation’s living pillars fall,
How rich the storied page, how vast,
A word, a whisper, can recall!
Nor speaking marble cheats your eye;
Yet, while these pictured lines I trace,
A living image passes by:
The cloisters of a hill-girt plain;
The front of life’s embattled lines;
A mound beside the heaving main.
Set life’s round dial in the sun,
Count the swift arc of seventy years,
His frame is dust; his task is done.
Ere the declining sun has laid
His bleaching rays on manhood’s power,
And look upon the mighty shade.
No change uncrown his brow; behold!
Dark, calm, large-fronted, lightning-eyed,
Earth has no double from its mould!
The battle-smoke had rolled away,
And bared the blood-red setting sun,
His eyes were opened on the day.
Black with the strife that made it free;
He lived to see its banners dip
Their fringes in the western sea.
His words the mountain echoes knew;
The northern breezes swept his fame
From icy lake to warm bayou.
When life’s full cycle was complete,
Put off his robes of power and pride,
And laid them at his Master’s feet.
Whom life’s wild tempests roughly tried,
Whose heart was like the streaming caves
Of ocean, throbbing at his side.
Laid softly on the furrowed hill;
It hides the broken seams below,
And leaves the summit brighter still.
His name a nation’s heart shall keep,
Till morning’s latest sunlight fades
On the blue tablet of the deep!