POEMS OF OCCASION
AD VIGILEM
What seest thou, where the peaks about thee stand,
Far up the ridge that severs from our view
That realm unvisited? What prospect new
Holds thy rapt eye? What glories of the land,
Which from yon loftier cliff thou now hast scanned,
Upon thy visage set their lustrous hue?
Speak, and interpret still, O Watchman true,
The signals answering thy lifted hand!
And bide thee yet! still linger, ere thy feet
To sainted bards that beckon bear thee down—
Though lilies, asphodel, and spikenard sweet
Await thy tread to blossom; and the crown
Long since is woven of Heaven's palm-leaves, meet
For him whom Earth can lend no more renown.
Whittier's Eightieth Birthday,
December 17, 1887.
"ERGO IRIS"
Weary at length of the ancestral gloom,
The self-same drone, the patter of dull pens,
Nature sent Iris of the rosy plume,
Bearing to Holmes her wonder-working lens;
Grateful, he gave his dearest child her name,
Lit the shrewd East with laughter, love, and tears,—
Bade halt the sun—and arching into fame
His rainbowed fancy now the world enspheres.
On his Eightieth Birthday,
August 29, 1889.
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