Who are the Poet’s friends? Alas! But few in human shape he has; Yet Nature shrines a hoard for him, Far in her sanctuary dim: Forth, from the flowers and gentle streams, For him a ray of friendship gleams; The breeze that shakes the forest-tree, For him hath love and sympathy; The sunset cloud a radiance lends— And wave and star to him are friends. Who is the Poet’s worshiped love? A being from the halls above; A thing of ideal life and light, Intensely beautiful and bright; Embodying it in human form, With passions redolent and warm— But sees, upon a near survey, The visionary pass away; And finds, instead of hope’s ideal, A being cold, and false, and real. What is the Poet’s heritage, In every clime, in every age? While living, disappointment, doubt, To wear his wasting spirit out; To feel ambition’s haughty fire, Yet doomed to see its light expire; To struggle on, and toil for fame; To bear with scorn, and want, and shame; To hope, and find that he must die. For him, is life’s sole certainty. What is the Poet’s meed, when life Has passed, with all its toil and strife? A tardy justice to his name; A place upon the scroll of fame; A wreath of praise which must atone For years of suffering dark and lone; A guerdon valueless at last, When he who would have prized has past Far from the sound of man’s rank breath— A victor over all—even Death! When should the Poet die? At eve, When dew-drops glisten on each leaf; When stars come forth from their abode Beneath the footstool of our God, And linger on the holy sky; Then should the earth-worn Poet die: When all is still, and pure, and calm, Beneath the twilight’s hallowed balm— When flowers and stars unfold to pray— The Poet’s soul should pass away. Where should the Poet sleep, when death Has chained his proud, aspiring breath? For those who loved earth’s gentle bloom, Within a quiet lonely tomb, Afar the deep still woods among— Beneath green shadows, where the song Of bird, and bee, and breeze can fall, Making it pure and sacred all; Where flowers pour forth their latest sigh— There should the lowly Poet lie. The proud in heart should slumber where Enters no sound of earthly air; Silent, in some cathedral old, Where shadows fall from each marble mould; Where the colored radiance scarce can tell Of the world he toiled for, long and well— Where, side by side, the mighty dead A hallowing spell from their proud tombs shed— Where the kings of the earth to muse may come— The Poet may find his last, long home.