white array

And building robins wondered at our tears,

Snatched in his prime, the shape august

That should have stood unbent 'neath fourscore years,

The noble head, the eyes of furtive trust,

All gone to speechless dust. And he our passing guest, Shy nature, too, and stung with life's unrest,

Whom we too briefly had but could not hold,

Who brought ripe Oxford's culture to our board,

The Past's incalculable hoard, Mellowed by scutcheoned panes in cloisters old,

Seclusions ivy-hushed, and pavements

Forcing hard outlines mercilessly close,

Our social monotone of level days, Might make our best seem banishment;

But it was nothing so; Haply his instinct might divine, Beneath our drift of puritanic snow, The marvel sensitive and fine Of sanguinaria over-rash to blow And trust its shyness to an air malign;

Well might he prize truth's warranty and pledge

In the grim outcrop of our granite edge,

Or Hebrew fervor flashing forth at need

In the gaunt sons of Calvin's iron breed,

As prompt to give as skilled to win and keep;

But, though such intuitions might not cheer,

Yet life was good to him, and, there or here,

With that sufficing joy, the day was never cheap;

Thereto his mind was its own ample sphere,

And, like those buildings great that

through the year

Carry one temperature, his nature large Made its own climate, nor could any marge

Traced by convention stay him from his bent:

He had a habitude of mountain air; He brought wide outlook where he went,

And could on sunny uplands dwell Of prospect sweeter than the pastures fair

High-hung of viny Neufchâtel;

Nor, surely, did he miss Some pale, imaginary bliss Of earlier sights whose inner landscape still was Swiss.

V. 1.

I cannot think he wished so soon to die

With all his senses full of eager heat, And rosy years that stood expectant by To buckle the winged sandals on their feet,

He that was friends with earth, and all her sweet

Took with both hands unsparingly : Truly this life is precious to the root, And good the feel of grass beneath the foot;

To lie in buttercups and clover-bloom, Tenants in common with the bees, And watch the white clouds drift through gulfs of trees,

Is better than long waiting in the tomb;

Only once more to feel the coming spring

As the birds feel it when it bids them sing,

Only once more to see the moon Through leaf-fringed abbey-arches of

the elms

Curve her mild sickle in the West Sweet with the breath of hay-cocks, were a boon

Worth any promise of soothsayer realms

Or casual hope of being elsewhere blest;

To take December by the beard And crush the creaking snow with springy foot,

While overhead the North's dumb streamers shoot,

Till Winter fawn upon the cheek endeared,

Then the long evening-ends Lingered by cosy chimney-nooks, With high companionship of books Or slippered talk of friends

And sweet habitual looks,

Is better than to stop the ears with dust:

Too soon the spectre comes to say, "Thou

must!"

2.

When toil - crooked hands are crost upon the breast,

They comfort us with sense of rest; They must be glad to lie forever still; Their work is ended with their

day;

Another fills their room; 't is the World's ancient way,

Whether for good or ill; But the deft spinners of the brain, Who love each added day and find it gain,

Them overtakes the doom