The Lord of the mountain looks down from his crest As the banner of morning unfurls in the West; The Eagle was always the friend of the Sun; You are welcome!--The song of the cage-bird is done. BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY NOVEMBER 3, 1864 O EVEN-HANDED Nature! we confess This life that men so honor, love, and bless Has filled thine olden measure. Not the less. We count the precious seasons that remain; Strike not the level of the golden grain, But heap it high with years, that earth may gain. What heaven can lose,--for heaven is rich in song Do not all poets, dying, still prolong Their broken chants amid the seraph throng, Where, blind no more, Ionia's bard is seen, And England's heavenly minstrel sits between The Mantuan and the wan-cheeked Florentine? This was the first sweet singer in the cage Of our close-woven life. A new-born age Claims in his vesper song its heritage. Spare us, oh spare us long our heart's desire! Moloch, who calls our children through the fire, Leaves us the gentle master of the lyre. We count not on the dial of the sun The hours, the minutes, that his sands have run; Rather, as on those flowers that one by one. From earliest dawn their ordered bloom display Till evening's planet with her guiding ray Leads in the blind old mother of the day, We reckon by his songs, each song a flower, The long, long daylight, numbering hour by hour, Each breathing sweetness like a bridal bower. His morning glory shall we e'er forget? His noontide's full-blown lily coronet? His evening primrose has not opened yet; Nay, even if creeping Time should hide the skies In midnight from his century-laden eyes, Darkened like his who sang of Paradise, Would not some hidden song-bud open bright As the resplendent cactus of the night That floods the gloom with fragrance and with light? How can we praise the verse whose music flows With solemn cadence and majestic close, Pure as the dew that filters through the rose? How shall we thank him that in evil days He faltered never,--nor for blame, nor praise, Nor hire, nor party, shamed his earlier lays? But as his boyhood was of manliest hue, So to his youth his manly years were true, All dyed in royal purple through and through! He for whose touch the lyre of Heaven is strung Needs not the flattering toil of mortal tongue Let not the singer grieve to die unsung! Marbles forget their message to mankind: In his own verse the poet still we find, In his own page his memory lives enshrined, As in their amber sweets the smothered bees,-- As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze, Lies self-embalmed amidst the mouldering trees. Poets, like youngest children, never grow Out of their mother's fondness. Nature so Holds their soft hands, and will not let them go, Till at the last they track with even feet Her rhythmic footsteps, and their pulses beat Twinned with her pulses, and their lips repeat.