Now pillowed near loved Hylas’ lowly bed, Beneath our aged oaks and sighing pines, Pale Ion rests awhile his laureled head; (How sweet his slumber as he there reclines!) Why weep for Ion here? He is not dead, Nought of him Personal that mound confines; The hues ethereal of the morning red This clod embraces never, nor enshrines. Away the mourning multitude hath sped, And round us closes fast the gathering night, As from the drowsy dell the sun declines, Ion hath vanished from our clouded sight,— But on the morrow, with the budding May, A field goes Ion, at first flush of day, Across the pastures on his dewy way. [Illustration: MR. ALCOTT’S STUDY.] THE POET’S COUNTERSIGN. AN ODE READ BY F. B. SANBORN, AT THE OPENING OF THE CONCORD SCHOOL, JULY 17, 1882. “I grant, sweet soul, thy lovely argument Deserves the travail of a worthier pen; Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent, He robs thee of, and pays it thee again; He lends thee virtue,—and he stole that word From thy behavior; beauty doth he give, And found it on thy cheek; he can afford No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.” I. Across these meadows, o’er the hills, Beside our sleeping waters, hurrying rills, Through many a woodland dark, and many a bright arcade, Where out and in the shifting sunbeams braid An Indian mat of checquered light and shade,— The sister seasons in their maze, Since last we wakened here From hot siesta the still drowsy year, Have led the fourfold dance along our quiet ways,— Autumn apparelled sadly gay, Winter’s white furs and shortened day, Spring’s loitering footstep, quickened at the last, And half the affluent summer went and came, As for uncounted years the same— Ah me! another unreturning spring hath passed. II. “When the young die,” the Grecian mourner said, “The springtime from the year hath vanished;” The gray-haired poet, in unfailing youth, Sits by the shrine of Truth, Her oracles to spell, And their deep meaning tell; Or else he chants a bird-like note From that thick-bearded throat Which warbled forth the songs of smooth-cheeked May Beside Youth’s sunny fountain all the day; Sweetly the echoes ring As in the flush of spring; At last the poet dies, The sunny fountain dries,— The oracles are dumb, no more the wood-birds sing. III.