Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/228

POEMS OF OCCASION Winter, with beard and raiment blown before,

That was so seeming like our poet old and hoar.

What forms are these amid the pageant fair,

Harping with hands that falter? What sad throng?

They wait in vain, a mournful brotherhood,

And listen where their laurelled elder stood

For some last music fallen through the air.

"What cold, thin atmosphere now hears thy song?"

They ask, and long have wooed

The woods and waves that knew him, but can learn

Naught save the hollow, haunting cry, "Return! return!"

1878.

W. W.

BYRON

years, 't is writ,—O presage vain!—

Earth wills her offspring life, ere one complete

His term, and rest from travail, and be fain

To lay him down in natural death and sweet.

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