STODDARD'S POEMS
With no such tears as e'er were shed
Above the noblest of our dead
Do we to-day deplore
The Man that is no more.
Our sorrow hath a wider scope,
Too strange for fear, too vast for hope,
A wonder, blind and dumb,
That waits—what is to come!
Not more astounded had we been
If Madness, that dark night, unseen,
Had in our chambers crept,
And murdered while we slept.
We woke to find a mourning earth,
Our Lares shivered on the hearth,
The roof-tree fallen, all
That could affright, appall!
****
O honest face, which all men knew!
O tender heart, but known to few!
O wonder of the age,
Cut off by tragic rage!
To further illustrate the vigor of Mr. Stoddard's imagination we will quote from another of this class of poems. "Adsum," in commemoration of Thackeray, is widely known, and we pass it by. The opening of the ode written for Shakespeare's birthday is very striking:
She sat in her eternal home
The sovereign mother of mankind;
Before her was the peopled world,
The hollow night behind.
[149]
