Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/164

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS

Below my feet the thunders break,

Above my head the stars rejoice;

But man, although he babbles much,

Has never found a voice;

Ten thousand years have come and gone,

And not an hour of any day

But he has dumbly looked to me

The things he could not say.

It shall be so no more," she said;

And then, revolving in her mind,

She thought, "I will create a child

Shall speak for all his kind."

It was the spring-time of the year,

And lo! where Avon's waters flow,

The child, her darling, came on earth,

Three hundred years ago.

There was no portent in the sky,

No cry, like Pan's, along the seas;

Nor hovered round his baby-mouth

The swarm of classic bees.

"Vates Patriæ," which, if our memory serves us, was read at the Century Club on occasion of Mr. Bryant completing his 70th year, is remarkable for evenness and nobility of expression. It is as fine as Halleck's "Burns."

We are impressed by several poems of an elevated character, quite unlike anything before written, though involving no new methods of structure. They may be studied to advantage by people who confound [150]