Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/204

POEMS OF OCCASION Revisit now those glades

The stately mantled shades

Whose lips so wear the inexorable spell?

Saying, with heads sunk low,

All that we sought, we know,—

We know, but not to mortal ears may tell:

No answer unto man's desire

Shall thus be made, to quench his eager fire.

Under these orchard trees

Still pure and fresh the breeze

As where the plane-tree whispered to the elm;

The thrush and robin bring

A new-world offering

Of song,—nor are we banished from the realm

Of thought that as the wind is pure,

And converse deep, and memories that endure.

Some honey dropped as well,

Some dew of hydromel

From wilding meadow-bees, upon the lips

Of poet and sage who found,

Here on our own dear ground,

Light as of old; who let no dull eclipse

Obscure this modern sky, where first

Through perilous clouds the dawn of freedom burst.

Within this leafy haunt

Their service ministrant

Upheld the nobler freedom of the soul.

How was it hither came

The message and the flame

Anew? Make answer from thine aureole,

O mother Nature, thou who best

Man's heart in all thy ways interpretest!

174