Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/251

70° NORTH I mind me how those songs which bore my name

Found grace with you—those cantilenae parvae—

Yes, even my Viking (ere his namesake came,

And bounteous Harvey).

"H. M.," Her Majesty's? No, though in sooth

Victorian decades somewhat overlay us,

I read, with that braw accent of our youth,

Henricus Meus.

For am I not of them who, down the years

Now closed in Life's inexorable journal,

Have known your hand's strong grip that time endears,

Your words fraternal?

Yet knew you best, and last, from golden books,

The rare quintessence of your mystic spirit,—

When that through mortal eyes no longer looks

May mine be near it!

November 10, 1906.

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