Along the marge of these slow-gliding streams, Our winding Concord and the wider flow Of Charles by Cambridge, walks and dreams A throng of poets,—tearfully they go; For each bright river misses from its band The keenest eye, the truest heart, the surest minstrel hand,— They sleep each on his wooded hill above the sorrowing land. Duly each mound with garlands we adorn Of violet, lily, laurel, and the flowering thorn,— Sadly above them wave The wailing pine-trees of their native strand; Sadly the distant billows smite the shore, Plash in the sunlight, or at midnight roar; All sounds of melody, all things sweet and fair, On earth, in sea or air, Droop and grow silent by the poet’s grave. VII. Yet wherefore weep? Old age is but a tomb, A living hearse, slow creeping to the gloom And utter silence. He from age is freed Who meets the stroke of Death and rises thence Victor o’er every woe; his sure defence Is swift defeat; by that he doth succeed. Death is the poet’s friend—I speak it sooth; Death shall restore him to his golden youth, Unlock for him the portal of renown, And on Fame’s tablet write his verses down, For every age in endless time to read. With us Death’s quarrel is: he takes away Joy from our eyes—from this dark world the day— When other skies he opens to the poet’s ray. VIII. Lonely these meadows green, Silent these warbling woodlands must appear To us, by whom our poet-sage was seen Wandering among their beauties, year by year,— Listening with delicate ear To each fine note that fell from tree or sky, Or rose from earth on high: Glancing that falcon eye, In kindly radiance as of some young star, At all the shows of Nature near and far, Or on the tame procession plodding by, Of daily toil and care,—and all life’s pageantry; Then darting forth warm beams of wit and love, Wide as the sun’s great orbit, and as high above These paths wherein our lowly tasks we ply. IX. His was the task and his the lordly gift Our eyes, our hearts, bent earthward, to uplift; He found us chained in Plato’s fabled cave, Our faces long averted from the blaze Of Heaven’s broad light, and idly turned to gaze On shadows, flitting ceaseless as the wave That dashes ever idly on some isle enchanted; By shadows haunted We sat,—amused in youth, in manhood daunted, In vacant age forlorn,—then slipped within the grave, The same dull chain still clasped around our shroud; These captives, bound and bowed, He from their dungeon like that angel led Who softly to imprisoned Peter said, “Arise up quickly! gird thyself and flee!” We wist not whose the thrilling voice, we knew our souls were free. X.