Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/213

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HAWTHORNE

And if one of us yearns to follow the paths that thitherward wend—
Let him rest content,—let him have no fear,—he verily shall in the end.


Then not for the quick alone this hour unbar the entrance gate,
But a health to the brethren gone before, however they hold their state!
Nor think it all fancy that to our hearts there comes an answering thrill
From the Dead that echo our Vivats and are of the Century still.


HAWTHORNE

Harp of New England song,
That even in slumber tremblest with the touch
Of poets who like the four winds from thee waken
All harmonies that to thy strings belong,—
Say, wilt thou blame the younger hands too much
Which from thy laurelled resting-place have taken
Thee, crowned-one, in their hold? There is a name
Should quicken thee! No carol Hawthorne sang,
Yet his articulate spirit, like thine own,
Made answer, quick as flame,
To each breath of the shore from which he sprang,
And prose like his was poesy's high tone.


By measureless degrees
Star follows star throughout the rounded night.
Far off his path began, yet reached the near
Sweet influences of the Pleiades,—
A portion and a sharer of the light
That shall so long outlast each burning sphere.
Beneath the shade and whisper of the pines
Two youths were fostered in the Norseland air;

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