At the Funeral of a Minor Poet

The Sisters' Tragedy

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

[One of the Bearers soliloquizes:]

. . . Room in your heart for him, O Mother Earth,
Who loved
each flower and leaf that made you fair,
And sang your praise in
verses manifold
And delicate, with here and there a line
From
end to end in blossom like a bough
The May breathes on, so rich
it was. Some thought
The workmanship more costly than the
thing
Moulded or carved, as in those ornaments
Found at
Mycaene. And yet Nature's self
Works in this wise; upon a blade
of grass,
Or what small note she lends the woodland thrush,

Lavishing endless patience. He was born
Artist, not artisan,
which some few saw
And many dreamed not. As he wrote no odes

When Croesus wedded or Maecenas died,
And gave no breath to civic
feasts and shows,
He missed the glare that gilds more facile
men--
A twilight poet, groping quite alone,
Belated, in a
sphere where every nest
Is emptied of its music and its
wings.
Not great his gift; yet we can poorly spare
Even his
slight perfection in an age
Of limping triolets and tame
rondeaux.
He had at least ideals, though unreached,
And
heard, far off, immortal harmonies,
Such as fall coldly on our
ear to-day.
The mighty Zolaistic Movement now
Engrosses us--a
miasmatic breath
Blown from the slums. We paint life as it
is,
The hideous side of it, with careful pains,
Making a god
of the dull Commonplace.
For have we not the old gods
overthrown
And set up strangest idols? We could clip

Imagination's wing and kill delight,
Our sole art being to leave
nothing out
That renders art offensive. Not for us
Madonnas
leaning from their starry thrones
Ineffable, nor any
heaven-wrought dream
Of sculptor or of poet; we prefer
Such
nightmare visions as in morbid brains
Take shape and substance,
thoughts that taint the air
And make all life unlovely. Will it
last?
Beauty alone endures from age to age,
From age to age
endures, handmaid of God.
Poets who walk with her on earth go
hence
Bearing a talisman. You bury one,
With his hushed
music, in some Potter's Field;
The snows and rains blot out his
very name,
As he from life seems blotted: through Time's
glass
Slip the invisible and magic sands
That mark the
century, then falls a day
The world is suddenly conscious of a
flower,
Imperishable, ever to be prized,
Sprung from the
mould of a forgotten grave.
'Tis said the seeds wrapt up among
the balms
And hieroglyphics of Egyptian kings
Hold strange
vitality, and, planted, grow
After the lapse of thrice a thousand
years.
Some day, perchance, some unregarded note
Of our poor
friend here--some sweet minor chord
That failed to lure our more
accustomed ear--
May witch the fancy of an unborn age.
Who
knows, since seeds have such tenacity?
Meanwhile he's dead, with
scantiest laurel won
And little of our Nineteenth Century
gold.
So, take him, Earth, and this his mortal part,
With
that shrewd alchemy thou hast, transmute
To flower and leaf in
thine unending Springs!