| |
| I READ the marble-lettered name, | |
| And half in bitterness I said: | |
| “As Dante from Ravenna came, | |
| Our poet came from exile—dead.” | |
| And yet, had it been asked of him | 5 |
| Where he would rather lay his head, | |
| This spot he would have chosen. Dim | |
| The city’s hum drifts o’er his grave, | |
| And green above the hollies wave | |
| Their jagged leaves, as when a boy, | 10 |
| On blissful summer afternoons, | |
| He came to sing the birds his runes, | |
| And tell the river of his joy. | |
| |
| Who dreams that in his wanderings wide, | |
| By stern misfortunes tossed and driven, | 15 |
| His soul’s electric strands were riven | |
| From home and country? Let betide | |
| What might, what would, his boast, his pride, | |
| Was in his stricken mother-land, | |
| That could but bless and bid him go, | 20 |
| Because no crust was in her hand | |
| To stay her children’s need. We know | |
| The mystic cable sank too deep | |
| For surface storm or stress to strain, | |
| Or from his answering heart to keep | 25 |
| The spark from flashing back again! | |
| |
| Think of the thousand mellow rhymes, | |
| The pure idyllic passion-flowers, | |
| Wherewith, in far gone, happier times, | |
| He garlanded this South of ours. | 30 |
| Provençal-like, he wandered long, | |
| And sang at many a stranger’s board, | |
| Yet ’t was Virginia’s name that poured | |
| The tenderest pathos through his song. | |
| We owe the Poet praise and tears, | 35 |
| Whose ringing ballad sends the brave, | |
| Bold Stuart riding down the years— | |
| What have we given him? Just a grave! | |
| |
