James Russell Lowell

1819-1891     Thou shouldst have sung the swan-song for the choir     That filled our groves with music till the day     Lit the last hilltop with its reddening fire,     And evening listened for thy lingering lay.     But thou hast found thy voice in realms afar     Where strains celestial blend their notes with thine;     Some cloudless sphere beneath a happier star     Welcomes the bright-winged spirit we resign.     How Nature mourns thee in the still retreat     Where passed in peace thy love-enchanted hours!     Where shall she find an eye like thine to greet     Spring's earliest footprints on her opening flowers?     Have the pale wayside weeds no fond regret     For him who read the secrets they enfold?     Shall the proud spangles of the field forget     The verse that lent new glory to their gold?     And ye whose carols wooed his infant ear,     Whose chants with answering woodnotes he repaid,     Have ye no song his spirit still may hear     From Elmwood's vaults of overarching shade?     Friends of his studious hours, who thronged to teach     The deep-read scholar all your varied lore,     Shall he no longer seek your shelves to reach     The treasure missing from his world-wide store?     This singer whom we long have held so dear     Was Nature's darling, shapely, strong, and fair;     Of keenest wit, of judgment crystal-clear,     Easy of converse, courteous, debonair,     Fit for the loftiest or the lowliest lot,     Self-poised, imperial, yet of simplest ways;     At home alike in castle or in cot,     True to his aim, let others blame or praise.     Freedom he found an heirloom from his sires;     Song, letters, statecraft, shared his years in turn;     All went to feed the nation's altar-fires     Whose mourning children wreathe his funeral urn.     He loved New England, - people, language, soil,     Unweaned by exile from her arid breast.     Farewell awhile, white-handed son of toil,     Go with her brown-armed laborers to thy rest.     Peace to thy slumber in the forest shade!     Poet and patriot, every gift was thine;     Thy name shall live while summers bloom and fade,     And grateful Memory guard thy leafy shrine!