Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Descriptive Poems: I. Personal: Great Writers

Walton’s Book of Lives

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

THERE are no colors in the fairest sky

So fair as these. The feather, whence the pen

Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men

Dropped from an angel’s wing. With moistened eye

We read of faith and purest charity

In statesman, priest, and humble citizen:

O, could we copy their mild virtues, then

What joy to live, what blessedness to die!

Methinks their very names shine still and bright;

Apart,—like glow-worms on a summer night;

Or lonely tapers when from far they fling

A guiding ray; or seen, like stars on high,

Satellites burning in a lucid ring

Around meek Walton’s heavenly memory.