Are mercilessly fleet,
    And at a bound annihilate
Ocean’s prerogative of short reprieve;
        Surely ill news might wait,
And man be patient of delay to grieve: 
        Letters have sympathies
    And tell-tale faces that reveal, 20
    To senses finer than the eyes. 
Their errand’s purport ere we break the seal;
They wind a sorrow round with circumstance
To stay its feet, nor all unwarned displace
The veil that darkened from our sidelong glance
        The inexorable face: 
    But now Fate stuns as with a mace;
The savage of the skies, that men have caught
    And some scant use of language taught,
        Tells only what he must,—­ 30
The steel-cold fact in one laconic thrust.

2.

So thought I, as, with vague, mechanic eyes,
I scanned the festering news we half despise
        Yet scramble for no less,
And read of public scandal, private fraud,
Crime flaunting scot-free while the mob applaud,
Office made vile to bribe unworthiness,
    And all the unwholesome mess
The Land of Honest Abraham serves of late
    To teach the Old World how to wait, 40
        When suddenly,
As happens if the brain, from overweight
        Of blood, infect the eye,
Three tiny words grew lurid as I read,
And reeled commingling:  Agassiz is dead. 
As when, beneath the street’s familiar jar,
An earthquake’s alien omen rumbles far,
Men listen and forebode, I hung my head,
    And strove the present to recall,
As if the blow that stunned were yet to fall. 50

3.

    Uprooted is our mountain oak,
That promised long security of shade
And brooding-place for many a winged thought;
   Not by Time’s softly cadenced stroke
With pauses of relenting pity stayed,
But ere a root seemed sapt, a bough decayed, From sudden ambush by the whirlwind caught And in his broad maturity betrayed!

4.

Well might I, as of old, appeal to you,
    O mountains, woods, and streams, 60
To help us mourn him, for ye loved him too;
    But simpler moods befit our modern themes,
And no less perfect birth of nature can,
Though they yearn tow’rd him, sympathize with man. 
Save as dumb fellow-prisoners through a wall;
    Answer ye rather to my call,
Strong poets of a more unconscious day,
When Nature spake nor sought nice reasons why,
Too much for softer arts forgotten since
That teach our forthright tongue to lisp and mince, 70
And drown in music the heart’s bitter cry! 
Lead me some steps in your directer way,
Teach me those words that strike a solid root
        Within the ears of men;
Ye chiefly, virile both to think and feel,
Deep-chested Chapman and firm-footed Ben,
For he was masculine from head to heel. 
Nay, let himself stand undiminished by