Page:Selections from the American poets (IA selectamerpoet00bryarich).pdf/136

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Fitz-Greene Halleck.
Praise to the bard! his words are driven,
 Like flower-seeds by the far winds sown,
Where'er, beneath the sky of heaven,
 The birds of fame have flown.

Praise to the man! a nation stood
 Beside his coffin with wet eyes,
Her brave, her beautiful, her good,
 As when a loved one dies.

And still, as on his funeral day,
 Men stand his cold earth-couch around,
With the mute homage that we pay
 To consecrated ground.

And consecrated ground it is,
 The last, the hallow'd home of one
Who lives upon all memories,
 Though with the buried gone.

Such graves as his are pilgrim-shrines,
 Shrines to no code or creed confined—
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
 The Meccas of the mind.

Sages, with Wisdom's garland wreathed,
 Crown'd kings, and mitred priests of power,
And warriors with their bright swords sheathed,
 The mightiest of the hour;

And lowlier names, whose humble home
 Is lit by Fortune's dimmer star,
Are there—o'er wave and mountain come,
 From countries near and far;

Pilgrims, whose wandering feet have press'd
 The Switzer's snow, the Arab's sand,
Or trod the piled leaves of the West,
 My own green forest-land.

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