Page:Halleck.djvu/192

And changed thy dome of painted bricks
And porter-casks and politics,
Into a green Arcadian vale,
With Stephen Allen¹⁰ for its lark,
Ben Bailey’s voice its watch-dog’s bark,
And John Targee its nightingale.

These, and the other thirty-four,
Will live a thousand years or more—
If the world lasts so long. For me,
I rhyme not for posterity,
Though pleasant to my heirs might be
The incense of its praise,
When I, their ancestor, have gone,
And paid the debt, the only one
A poet ever pays.
But many are my years, and few
Are left me ere night’s holy dew,
And sorrow’s holier tears, will keep
The grass green where in death I sleep.

And when that grass is green above me,
And those who bless me now and love me
Are sleeping by my side,
Will it avail me aught that men
Tell to the world with lip and pen
That once I lived and died?
No: if a garland for my brow
Is growing, let me have it now,