Posthumous

Put them in print? Make one more dint In the ages’ furrowed rock? No, no! Let his name and his verses go. These idle scraps, they would but wrong His memory, whom we honored long, And men would ask: “Is this the best— Is this the whole his life expressed?” Haply he had no care to tell To all the thoughts which flung their spell Around us when the night grew deep, Making it seem a loss to sleep, Exalting the low, dingy room To some high auditorium. And when we parted homeward, still They followed us beyond the hill. The heaven had brought new stars to sight, Opening the map of later night; And the wide silence of the snow, And the dark whispers of the pines, And those keen fires that glittered slow Along the zodiac’s wintry signs, Seemed witnesses and near of kin To the high dreams we held within. Yet what is left To us bereft, Save these remains, Which now the moth Will fret, or swifter fire consume? These inky stains On his table-cloth; These prints that decked his room; His throne, this ragged easy-chair; This battered pipe, his councillor. This is the sum and inventory. No son he left to tell his story, No gold, no lands, no fame, no book. Yet one of us, his heirs, who took The impress of his brain and heart, May gain from Heaven the lucky art His untold meanings to impart In words that will not soon decay. Then gratefully will such one say: “This phrase, dear friend, perhaps, is mine; The breath that gave it life was thine.”