The world was wrapt in innocence of snow
And the cast-iron bay was blind and still;
These were our poetry; in him perhaps 330
Science had barred the gate that lets in dream,
And he would rather count the perch and bream
Than with the current’s idle fancy lapse;
And yet he had the poet’s open eye
That takes a frank delight in all it sees,
Nor was earth voiceless, nor the mystic sky,
To him the life-long friend of fields and trees: 
Then came the prose of the suburban street,
Its silence deepened by our echoing feet,
And converse such as rambling hazard finds; 340
Then he who many cities knew and many minds,
And men once world-noised, now mere Ossian forms
Of misty memory, bade them live anew
As when they shared earth’s manifold delight,
In shape, in gait, in voice, in gesture true,
And, with an accent heightening as he warms,
Would stop forgetful of the shortening night,
Drop my confining arm, and pour profuse
Much worldly wisdom kept for others’ use,
Not for his own, for he was rash and free, 350
His purse or knowledge all men’s, like the sea. 
Still can I hear his voice’s shrilling might
(With pauses broken, while the fitful spark
He blew more hotly rounded on the dark
To hint his features with a Rembrandt light)
Call Oken back, or Humboldt, or Lamarck,
Or Cuvier’s taller shade, and many more
Whom he had seen, or knew from others’ sight,
And make them men to me as ne’er before: 
Not seldom, as the undeadened fibre stirred 360
Of noble friendships knit beyond the sea,
German or French thrust by the lagging word,
For a good leash of mother-tongues had he. 
At last, arrived at where our paths divide,
‘Good night!’ and, ere the distance grew too wide,
‘Good night!’ again; and now with cheated ear
I half hear his who mine shall never hear.

2.

  Sometimes it seemed as if New England air
  For his large lungs too parsimonious were,
  As if those empty rooms of dogma drear 370
  Where the ghost shivers of a faith austere
    Counting the horns o’er of the Beast,
Still scaring those whose faith to it is least,
  As if those snaps o’ th’ moral atmosphere
  That sharpen all the needles of the East,
    Had been to him like death,
  Accustomed to draw Europe’s freer breath
      In a more stable element;
  Nay, even our landscape, half the year morose,
  Our practical horizon, grimly pent, 380
  Our air, sincere of ceremonious haze,
  Forcing hard outlines mercilessly close,
  Our social monotone of level days,
    Might make our best seem banishment;
       But it was nothing so;
    Haply this instinct might divine,
  Beneath our drift of puritanic snow,
    The marvel sensitive and fine
  Of sanguinaria over-rash to blow
  And trust its shyness to an air malign; 390