Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/380

352 Kind Heaven forbid

Our lives should lack forever what he gave;

Prove mirage-haunted, every good unreal!

Let the brave cheer of life we had through him

Return, reflected from his joyous soul

That cannot all be lost, where'er it hides,—

Hides, but is quenched not,—haply smiling still

Near where his well-loved Shakespeare smiling sits,

Whose birthday for his own new birth he took

Into the unseen world, to him not far

But radiant with the same mysterious light

That filled his noontime with the twilight dream.

And it was Easter, too—the golden day

Of resurrection, and man's dauntless hope.

Into the unseen he past, willing and glad,

And humbly proud of a great nation's love;

In honored age, with heart untouched by years

Save to grow sweeter, and more dear, more dear—

Into that world whereon, so oft, he mused;

Where he forgets not this, nor shall we him—

That magic smile, that most pathetic voice,

That starry glance, that rare and faithful soul.

From dream to dream he past on Shakespeare's day—

So dedicate his mind to pleasant thought,

So deep his fealty to that supreme shade;

He being, like him of Avon, a fairy child,

High-born of miracle and mystery,

Of wonder, and of wisdom, and of mirth.