Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/227

THE DEATH OE BRYANT His presence brooded on the rolling plain,

And on the lake there fell a sudden calm,—

His own tranquillity; the mountain bowed

Its head, and felt the coolness of a cloud,

And murmured, "He is passing!" and again

Through all its firs the wind swept like a psalm;

Its eagles, thunder-browed,

In that mist-moulded shape their kinsmen knew,

And circled high, and in his mantle soared from view.

So drew he to the living veil, which hung

Of old above the deep's unimaged face,

And sought his own. Henceforward he is free

Of vassalage to that mortality

Which men have given a sepulchre among

The pathways of their kind,—a resting-place

Where, bending one great knee,

Knelt the proud mother of a mighty land

In tenderness, and came anon a plumèd band.

Came one by one the seasons meetly drest,

To sentinel the relics of their seer.

First Spring—upon whose head a wreath was set

Of wind-flowers and the yellow-violet—

Advanced. Then Summer led his loveliest

Of months, one ever to the minstrel dear,

(Her sweet eyes dewy wet,)

June, and her sisters, whose brown hands entwine

The brier-rose and the bee-haunted columbine.

Next, Autumn, like a monarch sad of heart,

Came, tended by his melancholy days.

Purple he wore, and bore a golden rod,

His sceptre; and let fall upon the sod

A lone fringed-gentian ere he would depart.

Scarce had his train gone darkling down the ways

When Winter thither trod,— 197