Poems (Hooper)/To Longfellow

by Lucy Hamilton Hooper

TO LONGFELLOW.

The seal of Earth was on our lips,
 Our silence was unbroken,
The words our hearts could never find,
 Thy poet voice hath spoken.
No summer breeze, no sudden blast,
 From Winter's clarion ringing,
But bears some perfume of thy soul,
 Some echo of thy singing.

A starless twilight wraps the earth,
 The autumn winds are sighing,
A mistlike veil of mournful thought
 On heart and lip is lying.
It is not sorrow that we feel,
 This mood so far from gladness,
From thee we learned the words that tell
 The secret of our sadness.

Above us glows the ruby light
 Of wintry day's declining,
On snow-crowned hill and snow-wreathed spire
 We mark its splendors shining.
Like coral reefs, in that Red Sea,
 The trees stand stark and hoary,
And thou, Magician, hast revealed
 The secret of the glory.

We sit beside the dreary hearth
 With hearts bereft and lonely,
Our yearning gaze seeks evermore
 One chair, the vacant, only.
"Let us be patient," sighs thy voice,
 Heard even 'mid despair.
"There is no fireside on this earth
 But hath one vacant chair."

We stand beneath the stars and watch
 The river in its going,
The music of thy song divine
 Is blended with its flowing.
The moon looks brightly from the sky,
 And broken from the river,
The symbol of God's love and Earth's,
 Forever and forever:

And when our ardent souls aspire
 To deeds of high endeavor,
And we would climb the rocky heights
 Of Fame's sublime Forever,
No scoff or sneer, or syren wile,
 Come, spell or hind'rance flinging;
While from the skies serene and far
 Excelsior! is ringing.

O poet of our hearts and homes,
 Of song sublime, yet tender!
Long may the sunbeams on thy brow
 Seek for their kindred splendor.
Fame lingered not to spell thy name
 From tombstones worn and olden,
She learned it well, while yet thy locks
 With boyhood's gloss were golden.