Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/189

DARTMOUTH ODE Embarked in Fancy's shallop there,

And with the current seek the river's mouth,

Finding the outer ocean grand and fair.

Ay, like a stream's perpetual tide,

Wave after wave each blithe, successive throng

Must join the main and wander far and wide.

To you the golden, vanward years belong!

Ye need not fear to leave the shore:

Not seldom youth has shamed the sage

With riper wisdom,—but to age

Youth, youth, returns no more!

Be yours the strength by will to conquer fate,

Since to the man who sees his purpose clear,

And gains that knowledge of his sphere

Within which lies all happiness,—

Without, all danger and distress,—

And seeks the right, content to strive and wait,

To him all good things flow, nor honor crowns him late.

VIII

PHAROS

such there was, that brother elder-born

And loftiest,—from your household torn

In the rathe spring-time, ere

His steps could seek their olden pathways here.

Mourn!

Mourn, for your Mother mourns, of him bereft,—

Her strong one! he is fallen:

But has left

His works your heritage and guide,

Through East and West his stalwart fame divide.

Mourn, for the liberal youth,

The undaunted spirit whose quintessence rare,

Fanned by the Norseland air,

Saw flaming in its own white heat the truth

That Man, whate'er his ancestry, 159