II

Thank God, he saw you last in pomp of May,
Ere any leaf had felt the year’s regret;
Your latest image in his memory set
Was fair as when your landscape’s peaceful sway
Charmed dearer eyes with his to make delay
On Hope’s long prospect,—­as if They forget
The happy, They, the unspeakable Three, whose debt,
Like the hawk’s shadow, blots our brightest day: 
Better it is that ye should look so fair. 
Slopes that he loved, and ever-murmuring pines
That make a music out of silent air,
And bloom-heaped orchard-trees in prosperous lines;
In you the heart some sweeter hints divines,
And wiser, than in winter’s dull despair.

III

Old Friend, farewell!  Your kindly door again
I enter, but the master’s hand in mine
No more clasps welcome, and the temperate wine,
That cheered our long nights, other lips must stain: 
All is unchanged, but I expect in vain
The face alert, the manners free and fine,
The seventy years borne lightly as the pine
Wears its first down of snow in green disdain: 
Much did he, and much well; yet most of all
I prized his skill in leisure and the ease
Of a life flowing full without a plan;
For most are idly busy; him I call
Thrice fortunate who knew himself to please,
Learned in those arts that make a gentleman.

IV

Nor deem he lived unto himself alone;
His was the public spirit of his sire,
And in those eyes, soft with domestic fire,
A quenchless light of fiercer temper shone
What time about, the world our shame was blown
On every wind; his soul would not conspire
With selfish men to soothe the mob’s desire,
Veiling with garlands Moloch’s bloody stone;
The high-bred instincts of a better day
Ruled in his blood, when to be citizen
Rang Roman yet, and a Free People’s sway
Was not the exchequer of impoverished men,
Nor statesmanship with loaded votes to play,
Nor public office a tramps’ boosing-ken.

JOSEPH WINLOCK

DIED JUNE 11, 1875

Shy soul and stalwart, man of patient will
Through years one hair’s-breadth on our Dark to gain,
Who, from the stars he studied not in vain,
Had learned their secret to be strong and still,
Careless of fames that earth’s tin trumpets fill;
Born under Leo, broad of build and brain,
While others slept, he watched in that hushed fane
Of Science, only witness of his skill: 
Sudden as falls a shooting-star he fell,
But inextinguishable his luminous trace
In mind and heart of all that knew him well. 
Happy man’s doom!  To him the Fates were known
Of orbs dim hovering on the skirts of space,
Unprescient, through God’s mercy, of his own!