Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/225

THE DEATH OF BRYANT She did recall? How went

His antique shade, beaconed upon its way

Through the still aisles of night to universal day?

Her voice it was, her sovereign voice, which bade

The Earth resolve his elemental mould;

And once more came her summons: "Long, too long,

Thou lingerest, and charmest with thy song!

''Return! return!''" Thus Nature spoke, and made

Her sign; and forthwith on the minstrel old

An arrow, bright and strong,

Fell from the bent bow of the answering Sun,

Who cried, "The song is closed, the invocation done!"

But not as for those youths dead ere their prime,

New-entered on their music's high domain,

Then snatched away, did all things sorrow own:

No utterance now like that sad sweetest tone

When Bion died, and the Sicilian rhyme

Bewailed; no sobbing of the reeds that plain

Rehearsing some last moan

Of Lycidas; no strains which skyward swell

For Adonais still, and still for Asphodel!

The Muses wept not for him as for those

Of whom each vanished like a beauteous star

Quenched ere the shining midwatch of the night;

The greenwood Nymphs mourned not his lost delight;

Nor Echo, hidden in the tangled close,

Grieved that she could not mimic him afar.

He ceased not from our sight

Like him who, in the first glad flight of spring,

Fell as an eagle pierced with shafts from his own wing.

This was not Thyrsis! no, the minstrel lone

And reverend, the woodland singer hoar,

Who was dear Nature's nursling, and the priest 195