Hawthorne

HARP of New England Song, That even in slumber trembled with the touch Of poets who like the four winds from thee waken All harmonies that to thy strings belong,— Say, wilt thou blame the younger hands too much Which from thy laurelled resting place have taken Thee crowned one in their hold? There is a name Should quicken thee! No carol Hawthorne sang, Yet his articulate spirit, like thine own, Made answer, quick as flame, To each breath of the shore from which he sprang, And prose like his was poesy’s high tone.* * * * * But he whose quickened eye Saw through New England’s life her inmost spirit,— Her heart, and all the stays on which it leant,— Returns not, since he laid the pencil by Whose mystic touch none other shall inherit! What though its work unfinished lies? Half-bent The rainbow’s arch fades out in upper air; The shining cataract half-way down the height Breaks into mist; the haunting strain, that fell On listeners unaware, Ends incomplete, but through the starry night The ear still waits for what it did not tell.

Collection: 
English
Edmund Clarence Stedman
Sub Title: 
Descriptive Poems: I. Personal: Great Writers

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