By shrinking over-eagerness of heart, 260 Cloud charged with searching fire, whose shadow's sweep Heightened mean things with sense of brooding ill, 265 Whom high o'er Concord plains we laid to sleep, While the orchards mocked us in their white ar ray, And building robins wondered at our tears, Snatched in his prime, the shape august That should have stood unbent 'neath fourscore years, 270 The noble head, the eyes of furtive trust, All gone to speechless dust; And he our passing guest, Shy nature, too, and stung with life's unrest, Mellowed by scutcheoned panes in cloisters old, 280 Young head time-tonsured smoother than a friar's, But foiled with riddles dark and cloudy aims. 272. Arthur Hugh Clough, an English poet, author of the Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich, and editor of Dryden's Transla◄ tion of Plutarch's Lives, who came to this country in 1852 with some purpose of making it his home, but returned to England in less than a year. He lived while here in Cambridge, and strong attachments grew up between him and the men of letter; in Cambridge and Concord. 285 Not by still Isis or historic Thames, Nor by the Charles he tried to love with me, But, not misplaced, by Arno's hallowed brim, Nor scorned by Santa Croce's neighboring fames, Haply not mindless, wheresoe'er he be, 290 Of violets that to-day I scattered over him : He, too, is there, After the good centurion fitly named, Whom learning dulled not, nor convention tamed, 295 Our hearty Grecian of Homeric ways, 300 305 6. Yea truly, as the sallowing years Fall from us faster, like frost-loosened leaves An exile in the land once found divine, While my starved fire burns low, 287. Clough died in his forty-third year, November 13, 1861, and was buried in the little Protestant cemetery outside the walls of Florence. 288. Santa Croce is the church in Florence where many illustrious dead are buried, among them Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Galileo, Alfieri. 291. Cornelius Conway Felton Professor of Greek Language and Literature in Harvard College, and afterward President until his death in 1862. And homeless winds at the loose casement whine IV. 1. 310 Now forth into the darkness all are gone, Rocks her skiff's image on the broad lagoon, The world was wrapt in innocence of snow 325 And the cast-iron bay was blind and still; These were our poetry; in him perhaps Science had barred the gate that lets in dream, And he would rather count the perch and bream Than with the current's idle fancy lapse; 330 And yet he had the poet's open eye That takes a frank delight in all it sees, Nor was earth voiceless, nor the mystic sky, To him the life-long friend of fields and trees: 315. In walking over West Boston bridge at night one sees the lights from the houses on Beacon Street reflected in the water below and seeming to make one long light where flame and reflection join. Then came the prose of the suburban street, 335 Its silence deepened by our echoing feet, And converse such as rambling hazard finds; Of misty memory, bade them live anew 340 As when they shared earth's manifold delight, In shape, in gait, in voice, in gesture true, And, with an accent heightening as he warms, Would stop forgetful of the shortening night, Drop my confining arm, and pour profuse 345 Much wordly wisdom kept for others' use, Not for his own, for he was rash and free, His purse or knowledge all men's, like the sea. Still can I hear his voice's shrilling might (With pauses broken, while the fitful spark 350 He blew more hotly rounded on the dark To hint his features with a Rembrandt light). Call Oken back, or Humboldt, or Lamarck, Or Cuvier's taller shade, and many more Whom he had seen, or knew from others' sight, 355 And make them men to me as ne'er before: 337. See note to p. 373, 1. 230. 338. Ossian was a fabulous Celtic warrior poet known chiefly through the pretended poems of Ossian of James MacPhersou who lived in Scotland the latter half of the eighteenth century. There has been much controversy over the exact relation of Macpherson to the poems, which are Scotch crags looming out of Scotch mists. 352. Naturalists of renown. Oken was a remarkable and eccentric Swiss naturalist, 1779-1851; Humboldt a great naturalist and traveller, known by his Kosmos, 1769-1859; Lamarck, 1744-1829; Cuvier, in some respects the father of modern classification, and Agassiz's teacher, 1769-1832; all these were personally known to Agassiz. Not seldom, as the undeadened fibre stirred Of noble friendships knit beyond the sea, German or French thrust by the lagging word, For a good leash of mother-tongues had he. 360 At last, arrived at where our paths divide, "Good night!" and, ere the distance grew too wide, “Good night!” again; and now with cheated ear I half hear his who mine shall never hear. 2. Sometimes it seemed as if New England air Accustomed to draw Europe's freer breath 375 Nay, even our landscape, half the year morose, 380 Our air, sincere of ceremonious haze, Might make our best seem banishment, Haply his instinct might divine, 385 Of sanguinaria overrash to blow And warm its shyness in an air benign; Well might he prize truth's warranty and pledge |