On His Eightieth Birthday. Four-score! That gallant stripling? No! That passion-breathing Romeo, Who climbed, last night, the garden wall, Mocked by Mercutio’s madcap call! Four-score? What, he? Charles Surface? Nay; He is as young as blooming May; You do but jest; I know him well-- Who can forget wild Mirabel? Whatever the costume, forsooth, The same inimitable youth! Marked you the sables Hamlet wore, Dark-plumed, in moonlit Elsinore? Gray locks? Believe the joke who can! They “make him up” to play “old man”; Pluck off the wig! Crow’s feet erase! And recognize wag Murdoch’s face! Nay;--sober Time his card holds high, And, swearing figures will not lie, Adds up the years and proves the date: See, in the ten’s place, here, an eight. So be it; Chronos, go thy ways; Our friend grows old and full of days; His frame may bend to Time’s control, But Time is servant to his soul. His drama on the world’s wide stage, Now in the last calm scene, old age, Has been throughout legitimate, In motive true, performance great. Whoever thus fulfils his part Achieves the uttermost of art; Who thus the scene of life has trod Pleases the Manager--his God. Or soon or late, _exeunt_ all-- The bell will ring, the curtain fall, And we, the actors, put away The masking garments of the play. When we from off the boards have passed, And every light is out at last, We’ll leave the theater and go Where real life replaces show. Play out the play! and be content To wait for that supreme event; Dear Murdoch! master, father, friend,-- Star on! still bright’ning to the end! THE CONCORD SEER. The Transcendentalist--he now transcends The cloud of death to join exalted friends. The Saadi of the West, the Saint, the Sage, The north-sprung Plato of an un-Greek age, Hath changed his habitation, and his ghost Takes note authentic of the unknown coast. Ah, joy serene! there doth he recognize Congenial souls foreknown “polite and wise”:-- Two bards were first to hail his risen wraith, One sang the Psalm of Life, one that of Death; Then mystic Hawthorne took his willing hand, As Vergil Dante’s in the Shadow Land; Now haply doth his converse reconcile Momentous discords with redeemed Carlyle; Perhaps in Soul’s consortable domain He meets the shade of erudite Montaigne; Or German-Grecian Goethe shows the way To Fields Elysian where the Ancients stray;-- By some celestial brook of lucent flow, Where plane-trees with immortal verdure grow, May sit, discoursing calm philosophies, The Concord Seer, with argute Socrates. THE POET OF CLOVERNOOK. Read at the Celebration of Alice Cary’s birthday, to the children of the Public Schools of Cincinnati, April 26, 1880.