Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/673

1866.], as a relief from writing poetry,—yet when death happens we are all taken by surprise, just as if we thought God had overlooked his aged servant, or made him an exception to the great, inflexible law of our being; or as if a whisper had reached us, saying, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?"

But enough; a volume of such memoranda would be far short of what such a man deserves when he is finally translated. Faithful among the faithless, may we not hope that his grandeur and strength of purpose, and downright, fearless honesty, will have their appropriate reward, both here and hereafter?

F I could put my woods in song,

And tell what's there enjoyed,

All men would to my gardens throng,

And leave the cities void.

In my plot no tulips blow,

Snow-loving pines and oaks instead,

And rank the savage maples grow

From spring's faint flush to autumn red.

My garden is a forest-ledge,

Which older forests bound;

The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,

Then plunge in depths profound.

Here once the Deluge ploughed,

Laid the terraces, one by one;

Ebbing later whence it flowed,

They bleach and dry in the sun.

The sowers made haste to depart,

The wind and the birds which sowed it;

Not for fame, nor by rules of art,

Planted these and tempests flowed it.

Waters that wash my garden-side

Play not in Nature's lawful web,

They heed not moon or solar tide,—

Five years elapse from flood to ebb.

Hither hasted, in old time, Jove,

And every god,—none did refuse;

And be sure at last came Love,

And after Love, the Muse.