Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/170

POEMS OF OCCASION Alas, no longer dwells! Time's largest theft

Was that which learning and the world bereft

Of this pure scholar,—one who had been great

In every walk where led by choice or fate,

Were not his delicate yearnings still represt

Obeying duty's every-day behest.

He shrank from note, yet might have worn at ease

The garb whose counterfeit a sad world sees

Round many a dolt who gains, and deems it fame,

One tenth the honor due to 's name.

Too soon the years, gray Time's relentless breed,

Have claimed our Pascal. He is theirs indeed;

Yet three remain of the ancestral mould,

Abreast, like them who kept the bridge of old:

The true, large-hearted man so many found

A helpful guardian, stalwart, sane, and sound;

And he, by sure selection upward led,

Whom now we reverence as becomes the Head,—

The sweet polemic, pointing shafts divine

With kindly satire,—latest of the line

That dates from godly Pierson. No less dear,

And more revered with each unruffled year,

That other Grecian: he who stands aside

Watching the streams that gather and divide.

Alcestis' love, the Titan's deathless will,

We read of in his text, and drank our fill

At Plato's spring. Now, from his sacred shade,

Still on the outer world his hand is laid

In use and counsel. Whom the nation saw

Most fit for Heaven could best expound Earth's law.

His wise, kind eyes behold—nor are they loth—

The larger scope, the quarter-century's growth:

How blooms the Mother with unwrinkled brow,

To whom her wandering sons, returning now,

Come not alone, but bring their sons to prove 140