Chapter VI: For the Birthday of Edgar Allan Poe

(January 19, 1909)

Poet of doom, dementia, and death, Of beauty singing in a charnel house, Like the lost soul of a poor moon-mad maid, With too much loving of some lord of hell; Doomed and disastrous spirit, to what shore Of what dark gulf infernal art thou strayed, Or to what spectral star of topless heaven Art lifted and enthroned?

The winter dark, And the drear winter cold that welcomed thee To a world all winter, gird with ice and storm Thy January day--yea! the same world Of winter and the wintry hearts of men; And still, for all thy shining, the same swarm That mocked thy song gather about thy fame, With the small murmur of the undying worm, And whisper, blind and foul, amid thy dust.

TO RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Poet, whose words are like the tight-packed seed
Sealed in the capsule of a silver flower,
Still at your art we wonder as we read,
The art dynamic charging each word with power.

Seeds of the silver flower of Emerson:
One, on the winds to Scotland brought, did sink
In Carlyle's heart; and one was lately blown
To Belgium, and flowered in--Maeterlinck.

RICHARD WATSON GILDER (Obiit Nov. 18, 1909)

America grows poorer day by day-- Richer and richer, I have heard some say: They thought of a poor wealth I do not heed-- For, one by one, the men who dreamed the dream That was America, and is now no more, Have gone in flame through that mysterious door, And scarcely one remains, in all our need.

The dream goes with the dreamer--ah! beware, Country of facile silver and of gold, To slight the gentle strength of a pure prayer; America, all made out of a dream-- A dream of good men in the days of old; What if the dream should fade and none remain To tell your children the old dream again!

Therefore, with laurel and with tears and rue, Stand by his grave this sad November day, Sadder that he untimely goes away, Who sang and wrought so well for that high dream We call America--the world made new, New with clean hope and faith and purpose true.

Gilder, your name, with each return of Spring, Shall write itself in the soft April flowers, And, when you hear the murmur of bright showers Over your sleep, and little lives that sing Come back once more, know that the rainbowed rain Is but our tears, saying: "Come back again."

IN A COPY OF FITZGERALD'S "OMAR"

A little book, this grim November day,
Wherein, O tired heart, to creep away,--
Come drink this wine and wear this fadeless rose,
Nor heed the world, nor what the world shall say.

A thousand gardens--yet to-day there blows
In all their wintry walks no single rose,
But here with Omar you shall find the Spring
That fears no Autumn and eternal glows.

So on the song-soft petals of his rhyme Pillow your head, as in some golden clime, And let the beauty of eternity Smooth from your brow the little frets of time.