C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Memoriæ Positum
By James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
My lifelong friends in this dear spot,
Sad now for eyes that see them not,
I hear the autumnal breeze
Wake the dry leaves to sigh for gladness gone,
Whispering vague omens of oblivion;
Hear, restless as the seas,
Time’s grim feet rustling through the withered grace
Of many a spreading realm and strong-stemmed race,
Even as my own through these.
For loss that doth enrich us yet
With upward yearnings of regret?
Bleaker than unmossed stone
Our lives were but for this immortal gain
Of unstilled longing and inspiring pain!
As thrills of long-hushed tone
Live in the viol, so our souls grow fine
With keen vibrations from the touch divine
Of noble natures gone.
To vex the shy and sacred grief
With harsh obtrusions of relief;
Yet Verse, with noiseless feet,
Go whisper: “This death hath far choicer ends
Than slowly to impearl in hearts of friends;
These obsequies ’tis meet
Not to seclude in closets of the heart,
But, church-like, with wide doorways, to impart
Even to the heedless street.”
I see him stand before me now,
And read again on that young brow,
Where every hope was new,
How sweet were life! Yet, by the mouth firm-set,
And look made up for Duty’s utmost debt,
I could divine he knew
That death within the sulphurous hostile lines,
In the mere wreck of nobly pitched designs,
Plucks heart’s-ease, and not rue.
Who vanish down life’s evening stream
Placid as swans that drift in dream
Round the next river-bend!
Happy long life, with honor at the close,
Friends’ painless tears, the softened thought of foes!
And yet, like him, to spend
All at a gush, keeping our first faith sure
From mid-life’s doubt and eld’s contentment poor,—
What more could Fortune send?
On the red rampart’s slippery swell,
With heart that beat a charge, he fell
Foeward, as fits a man;
But the high soul burns on to light men’s feet
Where death for noble ends makes dying sweet;
His life her crescent’s span
Orbs full with share in their undarkening days
Who ever climbed the battailous steeps of praise
Since valor’s praise began.
Hath won him coeternal youth
With the immaculate prime of Truth;
While we, who make pretense
At living on, and wake and eat and sleep,
And life’s stale trick by repetition keep,—
Our fickle permanence
(A poor leaf-shadow on a brook, whose play
Of busy idlesse ceases with our day)
Is the mere cheat of sense.
Unhappy, and make terms with Fate
A little more to let us wait;
He leads for aye the advance,
Hope’s forlorn-hopes that plant the desperate good
For nobler earths and days of manlier mood;
Our wall of circumstance
Cleared at a bound, he flashes o’er the fight,
A saintly shape of fame, to cheer the right
And steel each wavering glance.
While with dim eyes I think of three;
Who weeps not others fair and brave as he?
Ah, when the fight is won,
Dear Land, whom triflers now make bold to scorn
(Thee! from whose forehead earth awaits her morn),
How nobler shall the sun
Flame in thy sky, how braver breathe thy air,
That thou bred’st children who for thee could dare
And die as thine have done!