Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/241

TO BAYARD TAYLOR

ON WHITE CARNATIONS GIVEN ME FOR MY BIRTHDAY

TO BAYARD TAYLOR

WITH A COPY OF THE ILIAD

, awaken not this music strong,

While round thy home the indolent sweet breeze

Floats lightly as the summer breath of seas

O'er which Ulysses heard the Sirens' song.

Dreams of low-lying isles to June belong,

And Circe holds us in her haunts of ease;

But later, when these high ancestral trees

Are sere, and such melodious languors wrong

The reddening strength of the autumnal year,

Yield to heroic words thy ear and eye;— 211