Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/223

GEORGE ARNOLD GEORGE ARNOLD

13, 1865

stood around the dreamless form

Whose strength was so untimely shaken,

Whose sleep not all our love could warm,

Nor any dearest voice awaken;

And while the Autumn breathed her sighs,

And dropped a thousand leafy glories,

And all the pathways, and the skies,

Were mindful of his songs and stories,

Nor failed to wear the mingled hues

He loved, and knew so well to render,

But wooed—alas, in vain!—their Muse

For one more tuneful lay and tender,

We paused awhile,—the gathered few

Who came, in longing, not in duty,—

With eyes that full of weeping grew,

To look their last upon his beauty.

Death would not rudely rob that face,

Nor dim its fine Arcadian brightness,

But gave the lines a clearer grace,

And sleep's repose, and marble's whiteness.

And, gazing there on him so young,

We thought of all his ended mission,

The broken links, the songs unsung,

The love that found no ripe fruition;

Till last the old, old question came

To hearts that beat with life around him, 193