2.

The shape erect is prone:  forever stilled
The winning tongue; the forehead’s high-piled heap,
A cairn which every science helped to build,
Unvalued will its golden secrets keep: 
He knows at last if Life or Death be best: 
Wherever he be flown, whatever vest 520
The being hath put on which lately here
So many-friended was, so full of cheer
To make men feel the Seeker’s noble zest,
We have not lost him all; he is not gone
To the dumb herd of them that wholly die;
The beauty of his better self lives on
In minds he touched with fire, in many an eye
He trained to Truth’s exact severity;
He was a Teacher:  why be grieved for him
Whose living word still stimulates the air? 530
In endless file shall loving scholars come
The glow of his transmitted touch to share,
And trace his features with an eye less dim
Than ours whose sense familiar wont makes dumb.

TO HOLMES

ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY

Dear Wendell, why need count the years
  Since first your genius made me thrill,
If what moved then to smiles or tears,
  Or both contending, move me still?

What has the Calendar to do
  With poets?  What Time’s fruitless tooth
With gay immortals such as you
  Whose years but emphasize your youth?

One air gave both their lease of breath;
  The same paths lured our boyish feet;
One earth will hold us safe in death
  With dust of saints and scholars sweet.

Our legends from one source were drawn,
  I scarce distinguish yours from mine,
And don’t we make the Gentiles yawn
  With ‘You remembers?’ o’er our wine!

If I, with too senescent air,
  Invade your elder memory’s pale,
You snub me with a pitying ’Where
  Were you in the September Gale?’

Both stared entranced at Lafayette,
  Saw Jackson dubbed with LL.D. 
What Cambridge saw not strikes us yet
  As scarcely worth one’s while to see.

Ten years my senior, when my name
  In Harvard’s entrance-book was writ,
Her halls still echoed with the fame
  Of you, her poet and her wit.

’Tis fifty years from then to now;
  But your Last Leaf renews its green,
Though, for the laurels on your brow
  (So thick they crowd), ’tis hardly seen.

The oriole’s fledglings fifty times
  Have flown from our familiar elms;
As many poets with their rhymes
  Oblivion’s darkling dust o’erwhelms.

The birds are hushed, the poets gone
  Where no harsh critic’s lash can reach,
And still your winged brood sing on
  To all who love our English speech.

Nay, let the foolish records he
  That make believe you’re seventy-five: 
You’re the old Wendell still to me,—­
  And that’s the youngest man alive.