Untouched, unwasted, tho' the crumbling clay
Lay wreckt and ruined! Ah, is it not so,
Dear poet-comrade, who from sight hast gone;
Is it not so that spirit hath a life
Death may not conquer? But, O dauntless one!
Still must we sorrow. Heavy is the strife
And thou not with us; thou of the old race
That with Jehovah parleyed, face to face.
THE TWELFTH OF DECEMBER
On this day Browning died?
Say, rather: On the tide
That throbs against those glorious palace walls;
That rises—pauses—falls
With melody and myriad-tinted gleams;
On that enchanted tide,
Half real, and half poured from lovely dreams,
A soul of Beauty,—a white, rhythmic flame,—
Past singing forth into the Eternal Beauty whence it came.
PART IV
SHERIDAN
I
Quietly, like a child
That sinks in slumber mild,
No pain or troubled thought his well-earned peace to mar,
Sank into endless rest our thunderbolt of war.
II
Tho' his the power to smite
Quick as the lightning's light,—
His single arm an army, his very name a host,—
Not his the love of blood, the warrior's cruel boast.
