Two Twilights

<SPAN name="chap052"></SPAN> <h3> POSTHUMOUS </h3> <p class="poem"> Put them in print?<br/> Make one more dint<br/> In the ages' furrowed rock? No, no!<br/> Let his name and his verses go.<br/> These idle scraps, they would but wrong<br/> His memory, whom we honored long;<br/> And men would ask: "Is this the best&mdash;<br/> Is this the whole his life expressed?"<br/> Haply he had no care to tell<br/> To all the thoughts which flung their spell<br/> Around us when the night grew deep,<br/> Making it seem a loss to sleep,<br/> Exalting the low, dingy room<br/> To some high auditorium.<br/> And when we parted homeward, still<br/> They followed us beyond the hill.<br/> The heaven had brought new stars to sight,<br/> Opening the map of later night;<br/> And the wide silence of the snow,<br/> <SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">And the dark whispers of the pines,</SPAN><br/> And those keen fires that glittered slow<br/> <SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Along the zodiac's wintry signs,</SPAN><br/> Seemed witnesses and near of kin<br/> To the high dreams we held within.<br/></p> <p class="poem"> Yet what is left<br/> To us bereft,<br/> Save these remains,<br/> Which now the moth<br/> Will fret, or swifter fire consume?<br/> These inky stains<br/> On his table-cloth;<br/> These prints that decked his room;<br/> His throne, this ragged easy-chair;<br/> This battered pipe, his councillor.<br/> This is the sum and inventory.<br/> No son he left to tell his story,<br/> No gold, no lands, no fame, no book.<br/> Yet one of us, his heirs, who took<br/> The impress of his brain and heart<br/> May gain from Heaven the lucky art<br/> His untold meanings to impart<br/> In words that will not soon decay.<br/> Then gratefully will such one say:<br/> "This phrase, dear friend, perhaps, is mine;<br/> The breath that gave it life was thine."<br/></p> <br/><br/><br/> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />