on the mystery
     Of life, and all the splendor of the world. 
     Here, as a child, in loving, curious way,
     He watched the bluebird’s coming; learned the date
     Of hyacinth and goldenrod, and made
     Friends of those little redmen of the elms,
     And slyly added to their winter store
     Of hazel-nuts:  no harmless thing that breathed,
     Footed or winged, but knew him for a friend. 
     The gilded butterfly was not afraid
     To trust its gold to that so gentle hand,
     The bluebird fled not from the pendent spray. 
     Ah, happy childhood, ringed with fortunate stars! 
     What dreams were his in this enchanted sphere,
     What intuitions of high destiny! 
     The honey-bees of Hybla touched his lips
     In that old New-World garden, unawares.

     So in her arms did Mother Nature fold
     Her poet, whispering what of wild and sweet
     Into his ear—­the state-affairs of birds,
     The lore of dawn and sunset, what the wind
     Said in the tree-tops—­fine, unfathomed things
     Henceforth to turn to music in his brain: 
     A various music, now like notes of flutes,
     And now like blasts of trumpets blown in wars. 
     Later he paced this leafy academe
     A student, drinking from Greek chalices
     The ripened vintage of the antique world. 
     And here to him came love, and love’s dear loss;
     Here honors came, the deep applause of men
     Touched to the heart by some swift-winged word
     That from his own full heart took eager flight—­
     Some strain of piercing sweetness or rebuke,
     For underneath his gentle nature flamed
     A noble scorn for all ignoble deed,
     Himself a bondman till all men were free.

     Thus passed his manhood; then to other lands
     He strayed, a stainless figure among courts
     Beside the Manzanares and the Thames. 
     Whence, after too long exile, he returned
     With fresher laurel, but sedater step
     And eye more serious, fain to breathe the air
     Where through the Cambridge marshes the blue Charles
     Uncoils its length and stretches to the sea: 
     Stream dear to him, at every curve a shrine
     For pilgrim Memory.  Again he watched
     His loved syringa whitening by the door,
     And knew the catbird’s welcome; in his walks
     Smiled on his tawny kinsmen of the elms
     Stealing his nuts; and in the ruined year
     Sat at his widowed hearthside with bent brows
     Leonine, frosty with the breath of time,
     And listened to the crooning of the wind
     In the wide Elmwood chimneys, as of old. 
     And then—­and then....

     The after-glow has faded from the elms,
     And in the denser darkness of the boughs
     From time to time the firefly’s tiny lamp
     Sparkles.  How often in still summer dusks
     He paused to note that transient phantom spark
     Flash on the air—­a light that outlasts him!