A Grave in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond

I read the marble-lettered name,   And half in bitterness I said: “As Dante from Ravenna came,   Our poet came from exile—dead.” And yet, had it been asked of him   Where he would rather lay his head, This spot he would have chosen. Dim     The city’s hum drifts o’er his grave,     And green above the hollies wave Their jagged leaves, as when a boy,   On blissful summer afternoons,   He came to sing the birds his runes, And tell the river of his joy. Who dreams that in his wanderings wide,     By stern misfortunes tossed and driven,     His soul’s electric strands were riven From home and country? Let betide What might, what would, his boast, his pride, Was in his stricken mother-land,   That could but bless and bid him go, Because no crust was in her hand   To stay her children’s need. We know The mystic cable sank too deep   For surface storm or stress to strain, Or from his answering heart to keep   The spark from flashing back again! Think of the thousand mellow rhymes,   The pure idyllic passion-flowers, Wherewith, in far gone, happier times,   He garlanded this South of ours. Provençal-like, he wandered long,     And sang at many a stranger’s board,     Yet ’t was Virginia’s name that poured The tenderest pathos through his song. We owe the Poet praise and tears,   Whose ringing ballad sends the brave, Bold Stuart riding down the years—   What have we given him? Just a grave!