Edmund Clarence Stedman (Эдмунд Кларенс Стедман)
Ad Vatem
Whittier! the Land that loves thee, she whose child Thou art,—and whose uplifted hands thou long Hast stayed with song availing like a prayer,— She feels a sudden pang, who gave thee birth And gave to thee the lineaments supreme Of her own freedom, that she could not make Thy tissues all immortal, or, if to change, To bloom through years coeval with her own; So that no touch of age nor frost of time Should wither thee, nor furrow thy dear face, Nor fleck thy hair with silver. Ay, she feels A double pang that thee, with each new year, Glad Youth may not revisit, like the Spring That routs her northern Winter and anew Melts off the hoar snow from her puissant hills. She could not make thee deathless; no, but thou, Thou sangest her always in abiding verse And hast thy fame immortal—as we say Immortal in this Earth that yet must die, And in this land now fairest and most young Of all fair lands that yet must perish with it. Thy words shall last: albeit thou growest old, Men say; but never old the poet's soul Becomes; only its covering takes on A reverend splendor, as in the misty fall Thine own auroral forests, ere at last Passes the spirit of the wooded dell. And stay thou with us long; vouchsafe us long This brave autumnal presence, ere the hues Slow fading,—ere the quaver of thy voice, The twilight of thine eye, move men to ask Where hides the chariot,—in what sunset vale, Beyond thy chosen river, champ the steeds That wait to bear thee skyward? Since we too Would feign thee, in our tenderness, to be Inviolate, excepted from thy kind, And that our bard and prophet best-beloved Shall vanish like that other: him that stood Undaunted in the pleasure-house of kings, And unto kings and crownèd harlots spake God's truth and judgment. At his sacred feet Far followed all the lesser men of old Whose lips were touched with fire, and caught from him The gift of prophecy; and thus from thee, Whittier, the younger singers,—whom thou seest Each emulous to be thy staff this day,— What learned they? righteous anger, burning scorn Of the oppressor, love to humankind, Sweet fealty to country and to home, Peace, stainless purity, high thoughts of heaven, And the clear, natural music of thy song.
Edmund Clarence Stedman’s other poems:
