The owl, belated in his plundering,
  Shall here await the friendly night,
Blinking whene’er he wakes, and wondering
  What fool it was invented light.

Hither the busy birds shall flutter,
  With the light timber for their nests,
And, pausing from their labor, utter
  The morning sunshine in their breasts.

What though his memory shall have vanished,
  Since the good deed he did survives? 
It is not wholly to be banished
  Thus to be part of many lives.

Grow, then, my foster-child, and strengthen,
  Bough over bough, a murmurous pile,
And, as your stately stem shall lengthen,
  So may the statelier of Argyll!

AN EPISTLE TO GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

’De prodome,
Des qu’il s’atorne a grant bonte
Ja n’iert tot dit ne tot conte,
Que leingue ne puet pas retraire
Tant d’enor com prodom set faire.’

  CRESTIEN DE TROIES, Li Romans dou
    Chevalier au Lyon, 784-788.

1874

Curtis, whose Wit, with Fancy arm in arm,
Masks half its muscle in its skill to charm,
And who so gently can the Wrong expose
As sometimes to make converts, never foes,
Or only such as good men must expect,
Knaves sore with conscience of their own defect,
I come with mild remonstrance.  Ere I start,
A kindlier errand interrupts my heart,
And I must utter, though it vex your ears,
The love, the honor, felt so many years. 10
Curtis, skilled equally with voice and pen
To stir the hearts or mould the minds of men,—­
That voice whose music, for I’ve heard you sing
Sweet as Casella, can with passion ring,
That pen whose rapid ease ne’er trips with haste,
Nor scrapes nor sputters, pointed with good taste,
First Steele’s, then Goldsmith’s, next it came to you,
Whom Thackeray rated best of all our crew,—­
Had letters kept you, every wreath were yours;
Had the World tempted, all its chariest doors 20
Had swung on flattered hinges to admit
Such high-bred manners, such good-natured wit;
At courts, in senates, who so fit to serve? 
And both invited, but you would not swerve,
All meaner prizes waiving that you might
In civic duty spend your heat and light,
Unpaid, untrammelled, with a sweet disdain
Refusing posts men grovel to attain. 
Good Man all own you; what is left me, then,
To heighten praise with but Good Citizen? 30

But why this praise to make you blush and stare,
And give a backache to your Easy-Chair? 
Old Crestien rightly says no language can
Express the worth of a true Gentleman,
And I agree; but other thoughts deride
My first intent, and lure my pen aside. 
Thinking of you, I see my firelight glow
On other faces, loved from long ago,
Dear to us both, and all these loves combine
With this I send and crowd in every line;