In 1833 a man named Hallam, A friend of Alfred’s, died at twenty-two. Thereafter Alfred worked his hopes and fears Upon the dark impasto of this loss In delicate colors. And in 1850 When you were sunk in melancholia, As one of no use in the world, adjudged To be of no use by your time and place, Alfred brought forth his Dante dream of life, Received the laureate wreath and settled down With a fair wife amid entrancing richness Of sunny seas and silken sails and dreams Of Araby, And ivied halls, and meadows where the breeze Of temperate England blows the hurrying cloud. There, seated like an Oriental king In silk and linen clothed took the acclaim Of England and the world!... This is the year You sit in a little office there in Springfield, Feet on the desk and brood. What are you thinking? You’re forty-one; around you spears are whacking The wind-mills of the day, you watch and weigh. The sun-light of your mind quivers about The darkness every thinking soul must know, And lights up hidden things behind the door, And in dark corners. You have fathomed much, Weighed life and men. O what a spheréd brain, Strong nerved, fresh blooded, firm in plasmic fire, And ready for a task, if there be one! That is the question that makes brooding thought: For you know well men come into the world And find no task, and die, and are not known-- Great spheréd brains gone into dust again, Their light under a bushel all their days! In 1859, Charles publishes His “Origin of Species,” and ’tis said You see it, or at least hear what it is. Out of three travelers in a distant land One writes a book of what the three have seen. Perhaps you never read much, yet perhaps Some books were just a record of your mind. How had it helped you in your work to read The “Idylls of the King”? As much, perhaps, Had Alfred read the Northwest Ordinance Of 1787....