DEDICATION

TO G.W.G.

With favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas,
We sailed for the Hesperides,
The land where golden apples grow;
But that, ah! that was long ago.

How far, since then, the ocean streams
Have swept us from that land of dreams,
That land of fiction and of truth,
The lost Atlantis of our youth!

Whither, oh, whither?  Are not these
The tempest-haunted Hebrides,
Where sea gulls scream, and breakers roar,
And wreck and sea-weed line the shore?

Ultima Thule!  Utmost Isle!
Here in thy harbors for a while
We lower our sails; a while we rest
From the unending, endless quest.

POEMS

BAYARD TAYLOR

Dead he lay among his books!
The peace of God was in his looks.

As the statues in the gloom
Watch o'er Maximilian's tomb,

So those volumes from their shelves
Watched him, silent as themselves.

Ah! his hand will nevermore
Turn their storied pages o'er;

Nevermore his lips repeat
Songs of theirs, however sweet.

Let the lifeless body rest!
He is gone, who was its guest;

Gone, as travellers haste to leave
An inn, nor tarry until eve.

Traveller! in what realms afar,
In what planet, in what star,

In what vast, aerial space,
Shines the light upon thy face?

In what gardens of delight
Rest thy weary feet to-night?

Poet! thou, whose latest verse
Was a garland on thy hearse;

Thou hast sung, with organ tone,
In Deukalion's life, thine own;

On the ruins of the Past
Blooms the perfect flower at last.

Friend! but yesterday the bells
Rang for thee their loud farewells;

And to-day they toll for thee,
Lying dead beyond the sea;

Lying dead among thy books,
The peace of God in all thy looks!

THE CHAMBER OVER THE GATE

Is it so far from thee
Thou canst no longer see,
In the Chamber over the Gate,
That old man desolate,
Weeping and wailing sore
For his son, who is no more?
    O Absalom, my son!

Is it so long ago
That cry of human woe
From the walled city came,
Calling on his dear name,
That it has died away
In the distance of to-day?
    O Absalom, my son!

There is no far or near,
There is neither there nor here,
There is neither soon nor late,
In that Chamber over the Gate,
Nor any long ago
To that cry of human woe,
    O Absalom, my son!

From the ages that are past
The voice sounds like a blast,
Over seas that wreck and drown,
Over tumult of traffic and town;
And from ages yet to be
Come the echoes back to me,
    O Absalom, my son!

Somewhere at every hour
The watchman on the tower
Looks forth, and sees the fleet
Approach of the hurrying feet
Of messengers, that bear
The tidings of despair.
    O Absalom, my son!

He goes forth from the door
Who shall return no more.
With him our joy departs;
The light goes out in our hearts;
In the Chamber over the Gate
We sit disconsolate.
    O Absalom, my son!

That 't is a common grief
Bringeth but slight relief;
Ours is the bitterest loss,
Ours is the heaviest cross;
And forever the cry will be
"Would God I had died for thee,
    O Absalom, my son!"

FROM MY ARM-CHAIR

TO THE CHILDREN OF CAMBRIDGE

Who presented to me on my Seventy-second Birth-day, February 27, 1879, this Chair, made from the Wood of the Village Blacksmith's Chestnut Tree.

Am I a king, that I should call my own
     This splendid ebon throne?
Or by what reason, or what right divine,
     Can I proclaim it mine?

Only, perhaps, by right divine of song
     It may to me belong;
Only because the spreading chestnut tree
     Of old was sung by me.

Well I remember it in all its prime,
     When in the summer-time
The affluent foliage of its branches made
     A cavern of cool shade.

There, by the blacksmith's forge, beside the street,
     Its blossoms white and sweet
Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,
     And murmured like a hive.

And when the winds of autumn, with a shout,
     Tossed its great arms about,
The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,
     Dropped to the ground beneath.

And now some fragments of its branches bare,
     Shaped as a stately chair,
Have by my hearthstone found a home at last,
     And whisper of the past.

The Danish king could not in all his pride
     Repel the ocean tide,
But, seated in this chair, I can in rhyme
     Roll back the tide of Time.

I see again, as one in vision sees,
     The blossoms and the bees,
And hear the children's voices shout and call,
     And the brown chestnuts fall.

I see the smithy with its fires aglow,
     I hear the bellows blow,
And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat
     The iron white with heat!

And thus, dear children, have ye made for me
     This day a jubilee,
And to my more than three-score years and ten
     Brought back my youth again.

The heart hath its own memory, like the mind,
     And in it are enshrined
The precious keepsakes, into which is wrought
     The giver's loving thought.