Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/224

POEMS OF OCCASION Why Death, with downward torch aflame,

Had searched our number till he found him?

Why passed the one who poorly knows

That blithesome spell for either fortune,

Or mocked with lingering menace those

Whose pains the final thrust importune;

Or left the toiling ones who bear

The crowd's neglect, the want that presses,

The woes no human soul can share,

Nor look, nor spoken word, confesses.

And from the earth no answer came,

The forest wore a stillness deeper,

The sky and lake smiled on the same,

And voiceless as the silent sleeper.

And so we turned ourselves away,

By earth and air and water chidden,

And left him with them, where he lay,

A sharer of their secret hidden.

And each the staff and shell again

Took up, and marched with memories haunted;

But henceforth, in our pilgrim-strain,

We'll miss a voice that sweetly chaunted!

THE DEATH OF BRYANT

was it then with Nature when the soul

Of her own poet heard a voice which came

From out the void, "Thou art no longer lent

To Earth!" when that incarnate spirit, blent

With the abiding force of waves that roll,

Wind-cradled vapors, circling stars that flame, 194