Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/213

HAWTHORNE And if one of us yearns to follow the paths that thitherward wend—

Let him rest content,—let him have no fear,—he verily shall in the end.

Then not for the quick alone this hour unbar the entrance gate,

But a health to the brethren gone before, however they hold their state!

Nor think it all fancy that to our hearts there comes an answering thrill

From the Dead that echo our Vivats and are of the Century still.

HAWTHORNE

of New England song,

That even in slumber tremblest with the touch

Of poets who like the four winds from thee waken

All harmonies that to thy strings belong,—

Say, wilt thou blame the younger hands too much

Which from thy laurelled resting-place have taken

Thee, crowned-one, in their hold? There is a name

Should quicken thee! No carol Hawthorne sang,

Yet his articulate spirit, like thine own,

Made answer, quick as flame,

To each breath of the shore from which he sprang,

And prose like his was poesy's high tone.

By measureless degrees

Star follows star throughout the rounded night.

Far off his path began, yet reached the near

Sweet influences of the Pleiades,—

A portion and a sharer of the light

That shall so long outlast each burning sphere.

Beneath the shade and whisper of the pines

Two youths were fostered in the Norseland air; 183