Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/163

STODDARD'S POEMS

With no such tears as e'er were shed

Above the noblest of our dead

Do we to-day deplore

The Man that is no more.

Our sorrow hath a wider scope,

Too strange for fear, too vast for hope,

A wonder, blind and dumb,

That waits—what is to come!

Not more astounded had we been

If Madness, that dark night, unseen,

Had in our chambers crept,

And murdered while we slept.

We woke to find a mourning earth,

Our Lares shivered on the hearth,

The roof-tree fallen, all

That could affright, appall!

O honest face, which all men knew!

O tender heart, but known to few!

O wonder of the age,

Cut off by tragic rage!

To further illustrate the vigor of Mr. Stoddard's imagination we will quote from another of this class of poems. "Adsum," in commemoration of Thackeray, is widely known, and we pass it by. The opening of the ode written for Shakespeare's birthday is very striking:

She sat in her eternal home

The sovereign mother of mankind;

Before her was the peopled world,

The hollow night behind.

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