Here, where I sit alone, is sometimes heard, From the great world, a whisper of my name, Joined, haply, to some kind commending word, By those whose praise is fame. And then, as if I thought thou still wert nigh, I turn me, half-forgetting thou art dead, To read the gentle gladness in thine eye That once I might have read. I turn, but see thee not; before my eyes The image of a hillside mound appears, Where all of thee that passed not to the skies Was laid with bitter tears. And I, whose thoughts go back to happier days That fled with thee, would gladly now resign All that the world can give of fame or praise For one sweet look of thine. Thus ever, when I read of generous deeds, Such words as thou didst once delight to hear, My heart is wrung with anguish as it bleeds To think thou art not near. And now that I can talk no more with thee Of ancient friends and days too fair to last, A bitterness blends with the memory Of all that happy past. That past had, indeed, been happy and most successful from every worldly point of view. He had published his poems, while still a young man, and they had made him famous at once. For more than fifty years he was honored as one of the first of the poets of America, and for a large part of that time he was held as indisputably the first in rank. His work received honors and commendation over the sea as well as at home, almost from the first. It seems very curious to us now to think of his selling the very finest of his poems for two dollars apiece; yet he did that, and seemed satisfied with the compensation. In later life, when two hundred dollars would have been gladly paid him for such poems, he declined to write, saying that no man should write poetry in old age. The greater part of his poetry was written before he went to New York and became editor-in-chief of the "Evening Post." After that time he was always driven by newspaper work and involved in political controversy, and rarely wrote verses. In old age he made his translations of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," which were very remarkable works for a man of his years; but he seldom wrote an original poem, although what he did write scarcely showed a falling off from the work of his prime.