Is better than long waiting in the tomb; Only once more to feel the coming spring As the birds feel it, when it bids them sing,

Only once more to see the moon Through leaf-fringed abbey-arches of the elms

Curve her mild sickle in the West Sweet with the breath of hay-cocks, were a boon

Worth any promise of soothsayer realms
Or casual hope of being elsewhere blest;
To take December by the beard
And crush the creaking snow with springy
foot,

While overhead the North's dumb streamers shoot,

Till Winter fawn upon the cheek endeared,

Then the long evening-ends

Lingered by cosy chimney-nooks,
With high companionship of books
Or slippered talk of friends
And sweet habitual looks,

Is better than to stop the ears with dust: Too soon the spectre comes to say, "Thou must!"

2.

When toil-crooked hands are crost upon the breast,

They comfort us with sense of rest; They must be glad to lie forever still; Their work is ended with their day; Another fills their room; 't is the World's ancient way,

Whether for good or ill;

But the deft spinners of the brain,
Who love each added day and find it
gain,

Them overtakes the doom

To snap the half-grown flower upon the loom

(Trophy that was to be of life-long pain), The thread no other skill can ever knit again.

'T was so with him, for he was glad to live,

'T was doubly so, for he left work begun;
Could not this eagerness of Fate forgive

Till all the allotted flax were spun ?
It matters not; for, go at night or noon,
A friend, whene'er he dies, has died too
soon,

And, once we hear the hopeless He is
dead,

So far as flesh hath knowledge, all is said.

Of those most precious parts of him we knew:

Could we be conscious but as dreamers be, 'T were sweet to leave this shifting life of tents

Sunk in the changeless calm of Deity;
Nay, to be mingled with the elements,
The fellow-servant of creative powers,
Partaker in the solemn year's events,
To share the work of busy - fingered
hours,

To be night's silent almoner of dew,
To rise again in plants and breathe and
grow,

To stream as tides the ocean caverns through,

Or with the rapture of great winds to blow

About earth's shaken coignes, were not a fate

To leave us all-disconsolate; Even endless slumber in the sweetening sod

spake,

But God to him was very God,
And not a visionary wraith

Skulking in murky corners of the mind,

And he was sure to be

Somehow, somewhere, imperishable as He, Not with His essence mystically combined, As some high spirits long, but whole and free,

A perfected and conscious Agassiz.
And such I figure him : the wise of old
Welcome and own him of their peaceful
fold,

Not truly with the guild enrolled
Of him who seeking inward guessed
Diviner riddles than the rest,

And groping in the darks of thought
Touched the Great Hand and knew it

Of his great chief, the slow-paced Stagyrite,

And Cuvier clasps once more his long-lost

son.

2.

The shape erect is prone: forever stilled The winning tongue; the forehead's highpiled heap,

A cairn which every science helped to build,

Unvalued will its golden secrets keep:
He knows at last if Life or Death be best:
Wherever he be flown, whatever vest
The being hath put on which lately here
So many-friended was, so full of cheer
To make men feel the Seeker's noble zest,
We have not lost him all; he is not gone
To the dumb herd of them that wholly
die;

The beauty of his better self lives on
In minds he touched with fire, in many an

THE pipe came safe, and welcome too,
As anything must be from you;
A meerschaum pure, 't would float as light
As she the girls call Amphitrite.
Mixture divine of foam and clay,
From both it stole the best away:
Its foam is such as crowns the glow
Of beakers brimmed by Veuve Clicquot;
Its clay is but congested lymph

Jove chose to make some choicer nymph;
And here combined, — why, this must be
The birth of some enchanted sea,
Shaped to immortal form, the type
And very Venus of a pipe.

When high I heap it with the weed
From Lethe wharf, whose potent seed
Nicotia, big from Bacchus, bore
And cast upon Virginia's shore,
I'll think, So fill the fairer bowl
And wise alembic of thy soul,

With herbs far-sought that shall distil,
Not fumes to slacken thought and will,
But bracing essences that nerve

To wait, to dare, to strive, to serve.

While slowly o'er its candid bowl
The color deepens (as the soul
That burns in mortals leaves its trace
Of bale or beauty on the face),
I'll think, - So let the essence rare
Of years consuming make me fair;
So, 'gainst the ills of life profuse,
Steep me in some narcotic juice;
And if my soul must part with all
That whiteness which we greenness call,
Smooth back, O Fortune, half thy frown,
And make me beautifully brown!

Dream-forger, I refill thy cup
With reverie's wasteful pittance up,
And while the fire burns slow away,
Hiding itself in ashes gray,

I'll think, As inward Youth retreats,
Compelled to spare his wasting heats,
When Life's Ash-Wednesday comes about,
And my head's gray with fires burnt out,
While stays one spark to light the eye,
With the last flash of memory,
'T will leap to welcome C. F. B.,
Who sent my favorite pipe to me.

BANKSIDE

(HOME OF EDMUND QUINCY)

DEDHAM, MAY 21, 1877

Edmund Quincy was eleven years the senior of Lowell, but their common labors in the early days of the anti-slavery movement, and their congeniality of temper and wit, made them very intimate friends.

I

I CHRISTENED you in happier days, before These gray forebodings on my brow were

seen;

The seventy years borne lightly as the pine Wears its first down of snow in green disdain:

Much did he, and much well; yet most of all

I prized his skill in leisure and the ease
Of a life flowing full without a plan;
For most are idly busy; him I call
Thrice fortunate who knew himself to
please,

Learned in those arts that make a gentle

man.

IV

Nor deem he lived unto himself alone;
His was the public spirit of his sire,
And in those eyes, soft with domestic fire,
A quenchless light of fiercer temper shone
What time about the world our shame was
blown

On every wind; his soul would not conspire

With selfish men to soothe the mob's desire,

Veiling with garlands Moloch's bloody stone;

The high-bred instincts of a better day
Ruled in his blood, when to be citizen
Rang Roman yet, and a Free People's sway
Was not the exchequer of impoverished