Large-limbed and human as I saw him

near,

Loosed from the stiffening uniform of

fame:

And let me treat him largely: I should

fear,

(If with too prying lens I chanced to err, Mistaking catalogue for character,) His wise forefinger raised in smiling

blame.

Nor would I scant him with judicial

breath

And turn mere critic in an epitaph;

I choose the wheat, incurious of the chaff That swells fame living, chokes it after death,

And would but memorize the shining half

Of his large nature that was turned to

me:

In some the genius is a thing apart,
A pillared hermit of the brain,
Hoarding with incommunicable art

Its intellectual gain;

Man's web of circumstance and fate They from their perch of self observe, Indifferent as the figures on a slate

Are to the planet's sun-swung curve Whose bright returns they calculate; Their nice adjustment, part to part, Were shaken from its serviceable mood By unpremeditated stirs of heart

Or jar of human neighborhood: Some find their natural selves, and only then,

In furloughs of divine escape from men,

And when, by that brief ecstasy left bare,

Driven by some instinct of desire, They wander worldward, 't is to blink

and stare,

Like wild things of the wood about a fire,

Dazed by the social glow they cannot share;

His nature brooked no lonely lair, But basked and bourgeoned in copartnery,

Companionship, and open-windowed glee:

He knew, for he had tried, Those speculative heights that lure The unpractised foot, impatient of a guide,

Tow'rd ether too attenuately pure For sweet unconscious breath, though dear to pride,

But better loved the foothold sure Of paths that wind by old abodes of men Who hope at last the churchyard's peace

secure,

And follow time-worn rules, that them suffice,

Learned from their sires, traditionally

wise,

Careful of honest custom's how and when;

His mind, too brave to look on Truth askance,

No more those habitudes of faith could

share,

But, tinged with sweetness of the old Swiss manse,

Lingered around them still and fain would spare.

Patient to spy a sullen egg for weeks,
The enigma of creation to surprise,
His truer instinct sought the life that
speaks

Without a mystery from kindly eyes;
In no self-spun cocoon of prudence
wound,

He by the touch of men was best inspired,

And caught his native greatness at rebound

From generosities itself had fired;
Then how the heat through every fibre

ran,

Felt in the gathering presence of the

man,

While the apt word and gesture came unbid!

Virtues and faults it to one metal wrought,

Fined all his blood to thought, And ran the molten man in all he said or did.

All Tully's rules and all Quintilian's too He by the light of listening faces knew, And his rapt audience all unconscious lent

Their own roused force to make him eloquent;

Persuasion fondled in his look and tone; Our speech (with strangers prudish) he

could bring

To find new charm in accents not her

own;

And but my chair is empty; 'mid them all

'Tis I that seem the dead: they all remain

Immortal, changeless creatures of the brain :

Wellnigh I doubt which world is real most,

Of sense or spirit, to the truly sane;
In this abstraction it were light to deem
Myself the figment of some stronger
dream;

They are the real things, and I the ghost That glide unhindered through the solid door,

Vainly for recognition seek from chair to chair,

And strive to speak and am but futile air,

As truly most of us are little more.

To challenge the o'ermastery of the
Old ;

Listening with eyes averse I see him
sit

Pricked with the cider of the Judge's wit

(Ripe-hearted homebrew, fresh and fresh again),

While the wise nose's firm-built aquiline

Curves sharper to restrain The merriment whose most unruly moods

Pass not the dumb laugh learned in listening woods

Of silence-shedding pine: Hard by is he whose art's consoling spell

Hath given both worlds a whiff of
asphodel,

His look still vernal 'mid the wintry
ring

Of petals that remember, not fore-
tell,

The paler primrose of a second spring.

Now forth into the darkness all are gone,

But memory, still unsated, follows ou, Retracing step by step our homeward walk,

With many a laugh among our serious talk,

Across the bridge where, on the dimpling tide,

The long red streamers from the windows glide,

Or the dim western moon Rocks her skiff's image on the broad lagoon,

And Boston shows a soft Venetian side

In that Arcadian light when roof and tree,

Hard prose by daylight, dream in Italy;

Or haply in the sky's cold chambers

wide