Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1864-12-01
A REAuTIFUL POEM.
RgyayT,s SEVENTEEN BIRTHDAY.

rTba following beautiful poem wass read iby Dr.
n " HOLMES. at the festival of the Century Club
in New York City, November Sd, given in honor OF
tho noet BRYANT, who on that day attained bis
SEVENTEEN year.
n even-handed nature We confess
This life that men so honor, love and bless,
Has filed thine olden MEASURE Not the less
We count the precious seasons that remain:
Strike not the level of the golden grain,
But heap it high with years, that earth ay gain
what heaven can lose-for heaven is rich in song
Do not all poets, dying, still prolong
Their broken chants amid the seraph throng,
Who're. blind no more, Ionia's bard is seen,
And Fngland's heavenly minstrel sits between
The Mantuan and the wan checked Florentlne!
This was the first sweet singer in the cage
of our close-woven life. newborn age
Claims in his vesper song its heritage;
Spare us, oh, spare us long our hearts desire!
MoIoch, who calls our children through the fire
Leaves US the gentle master Of the Tyre.
We count not on the dial of the sun
The hours. the min utes, that his sands have run,
Rather, as on those flowers that one by one
From earliest dawn their ordered bloom display,
Till evenings planet with her guiding ray
Leads in the blind old mother of the day.
We reckon by his songs, each song flower,
The long, long daylight, II umberng hour by hour,
Each breathing sweetness ike bridal bower.
His morning glory shall we e'er forget
His noontide's full-blown lily coronet?
His evening primrose has not opened yet,
Nay, even if creeping Time should hide the skies
In midnight from his century-lad eyes,
Darkened ike his who sang to Paradise,
Would not some hidden song bud open bright
As the resplendent cactus of the night
That floods the gloom with fragrance and with
light?
How can We praise the whose music flows
With solemn cadence and males &c close,
Pure as the dew that filters through the rose?
How shall we thank him that in evil days
He faltered never; nor Tor blame, nor praise,
Nor hire, nor party, shamed his earlier days?
But as his boyhood was of manifest hue,
So to his youth his manly years were true,
All dyed his royal purple through and through!
lie for whose touch the Tyre of Heaven is strung,
ssNeeds not the f a tering toll of mortal tongue;
Let not the singer greve to die unsung!
Marbles forget their message to mankind;
Ia his own verse the poet still we find,
In his own page his memoir lives enshuned.
A. in their amber sweets the smothered bees
As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze,
Lies self embalmed amidst the mOuldering trees,
Poets, like young est children, never grow
Out of their mothers fondness. Nature so
Holds their hands up and will not let them go,
Till at the last they track with even feet
Her rythmic footsteps, and their pulses beat
Twinned with her pulses, and theirlps repeat
The secrets she has told them, their own;
Thus is the inmost soul OF nature known,
And the rapt minstrel shares her awful thronei
0 lover of her mount aims and her woods,
Her bridal charmer's leafy solitudes,
Where love himself with tremulous step intrudcs,
Her SHOWS fall harmless on thy sacred fire;
Far be the day that claims thy sounding Tyre
To join the music OF the angel choir
Yet, since ife's amplest measure must be filled
Since throbbing hearts must be forever stilled,
And all must fade that evening sunsets gid,
Grant Father ere he close the mortal eyes
That see a Nations reeking sacrifice,
Its smoke may vanish from these blackene ed
skics.
Then, when his summons comes, since come it
must,
And, looking Heavenward, with unfaltering
trust,
Ii wraps his drapery round him for the dust,
His last fond glance will she him o er his head
The Northern fires beyond he zenith spread
In lambent CORY, blue, and white, and red
The Southern cross without its bleeding load,
The milky way Of peace all freshly strewed,
And every white -throned star fixed in its lost
abode