Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/169

MERIDIAN Speak out the hour, non potest quin, 't were well

The upper or the lower room to seek

For Tully's Latin, Homer's rhythmic Greek;—

Yet were it well? ay, brothers, if, alack,

For this one day the shadow might go back!

Ah, no! with doubtful faces each on each

We look, we speak with altered, graver speech:

The spell is gone! We know what 't is to wake

From an illusive dream, at morning's break,

That we again are dark-haired, buoyant, young,—

Scanning, once more, our spring-time mates among,

The grand hexameter—that anthem free

Of the pursuing, loud-resounding sea,—

To wake, anon, and know another day

Already speeds for one whose hairs are gray,—

In this swift change to lose a third of life

Lopped by the stroke of Memory's ruthless knife,

And feel, though naught go ill, it is a pain

That youth, lost youth, can never come again!

Were the dream real, or should we idly go

To yonder halls and strive to make it so,

There listening to the voices that rehearse,

Like ours of old, the swift Ionic verse,

What silvery speech could now for us restore

The cadence that we thought to hear once more?

The low, calm utterance of him who first

Our faltering minds to clearer knowledge nursed,—

The perfect teacher, who endured our raw

Harsh bleatings with a pang we never saw;

Whose bearing was so apt we scarcely knew,

At first, the wit that lit him through and through,

Strength's surplusage; nor, after many a day

Had taught us, rated well the heart that lay

Beneath his speech, nor guessed how brave a soul

In that frail body dwelt with fine control: 139