Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/196

POEMS OF OCCASION What marvel if, beneath his load,

At times he craved—for justice only!

Yet thanklessness, the serpent's tooth,

His lofty purpose could not alter;

Toil had no power to bend his youth,

Or make his lusty manhood falter;

From envy's sling, from slander's dart,

That armored soul the body shielded,

Till one dark sorrow chilled his heart,

And then he bowed his head and yielded.

Now, now, we measure at its worth

The gracious presence gone forever!

The wrinkled East, that gave him birth,

Laments with every laboring river;

Wild moan the free winds of the West

For him who gathered to her prairies

The sons of men, and made each crest

The haunt of happy household fairies;

And anguish sits upon the mouth

Of her who came to know him latest:

His heart was ever thine, O South!

He was thy truest friend, and greatest!

He shunned thee in thy splendid shame,

He stayed thee in thy voiceless sorrow;

The day thou shalt forget his name,

Fair South, can have no sadder morrow.

The tears that fall from eyes unused,—

The hands above his grave united,—

The words of men whose lips he loosed,

Whose cross he bore, whose wrongs he righted,—

Could he but know, and rest with this!

Yet stay, through Death's low-lying hollow, 166