Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/403

1866.] Few are the spirits of the glorified

I'd spring to earlier at the gate of Heaven."

Being asked if he had met Byron, Landor replied: "I never saw Byron but once, and then accidentally. I went into a perfumery shop in London to purchase a pot of the ottar of roses, which at that time was very rare and expensive. As I entered the shop a handsome young man, with a slight limp in his walk, passed me and went out. The shopkeeper directed my attention to him, saying: 'Do you know who that is, sir?' 'No,' I answered. 'That is the young Lord Byron.' He had been purchasing some fancy soaps, and at that time was the fashion. I never desired to meet him."

As all the world knows, there was little love lost between these two great writers; but it was the man, not the poet, that Landor so cordially disliked.

OW long will this harp which you once loved to hear

Cheat your lips of a smile or your eyes of a tear?

How long stir the echoes it wakened of old,

While its strings were unbroken, untarnished its gold?

Dear friends of my boyhood, my words do you wrong;

The heart, the heart only, shall throb in my song;

It reads the kind answer that looks from your eyes,—

"We will bid our old harper play on till he dies."

Though Youth, the fair angel that looked o'er the strings,

Has lost the bright glory that gleamed on his wings,

Though the freshness of morning has passed from its tone,

It is still the old harp that was always your own.

I claim not its music,—each note it affords

I strike from your heart-strings, that lend me its chords;

I know you will listen and love to the last,

For it trembles and thrills with the voice of your past.

Ah, brothers! dear brothers! the harp that I hold

No craftsman could string and no artisan mould;

He shaped it, He strung it, who fashioned the lyres

That ring with the hymns of the seraphim choirs.

Not mine are the visions of beauty it brings,

Not mine the faint fragrance around it that clings;

Those shapes are the phantoms of years that have fled,

Those sweets breathe from roses your summers have shed.