A month had flitted since The Club had met...

A month had flitted since The Club had met;

The day came round; I found the table set,

The waiters lounging round the marble stairs,

Empty as yet the double row of chairs.

I was a full half hour before the rest,

Alone, the banquet-chamber's single guest.

So from the table's side a chair I took,

And having neither company nor book

To keep me waking, by degrees there crept

A torpor over me,— in short, I slept.

Loosed from its chain, along the wreck-strown track

Of the dead years my soul goes travelling back;

My ghosts take on their robes of flesh; it seems

Dreaming is life; nay, life less life than dreams,

So real are the shapes that meet my eyes.

They bring no sense of wonder, no surprise,

No hint of other than an earth-born source;

All seems plain daylight, everything of course.

How dim the colors are, how poor and faint

This palette of weak words with which I paint!

Here sit my friends; if I could fix them so

As to my eyes they seem, my page would glow

Like a queen's missal, warm as if the brush

Of Titian or Velasquez brought the flush

Of life into their features. Ay de mi!

If syllables were pigments, you should see

Such breathing portraitures as never man

Found in the Pitti or the Vatican.

Here sits our POET, Laureate, if you will.

Long has he worn the wreath, and wears it still.

Dead? Nay, not so; and yet they say his bust

Looks down on marbles covering royal dust,

Kings by the Grace of God, or Nature's grace;

Dead! No! Alive! I see him in his place,

Full-featured, with the bloom that heaven denies

Her children, pinched by cold New England skies,

Too often, while the nursery's happier few

Win from a summer cloud its roseate hue.

Kind, soft-voiced, gentle, in his eye there shines

The ray serene that filled Evangeline's.

Modest he seems, not shy; content to wait

Amid the noisy clamor of debate

The looked-for moment when a peaceful word

Smooths the rough ripples louder tongues have stirred.

In every tone I mark his tender grace

And all his poems hinted in his face;

What tranquil joy his friendly presence gives!

How could. I think him dead? He lives! He lives!

There, at the table's further end I see

In his old place our Poet's vis-a-vis,

The great PROFESSOR, strong, broad-shouldered, square,

In life's rich noontide, joyous, debonair.

His social hour no leaden care alloys,

His laugh rings loud and mirthful as a boy's,—

That lusty laugh the Puritan forgot,—

What ear has heard it and remembers not?

How often, halting at some wide crevasse

Amid the windings of his Alpine pass,

High up the cliffs, the climbing mountaineer,

Listening the far-off avalanche to hear,

Silent, and leaning on his steel-shod staff,

Has heard that cheery voice, that ringing laugh,

From the rude cabin whose nomadic walls

Creep with the moving glacier as it crawls

How does vast Nature lead her living train

In ordered sequence through that spacious brain,

As in the primal hour when Adam named

The new-born tribes that young creation claimed!—

How will her realm be darkened, losing thee,

Her darling, whom we call our AGASSIZ!

But who is he whose massive frame belies

The maiden shyness of his downcast eyes?

Who broods in silence till, by questions pressed,

Some answer struggles from his laboring breast?

An artist Nature meant to dwell apart,

Locked in his studio with a human heart,

Tracking its eaverned passions to their lair,

And all its throbbing mysteries laying bare.

Count it no marvel that he broods alone

Over the heart he studies,—‘ t is his own;

So in his page, whatever shape it wear,

The Essex wizard's shadowed self is there,—

The great ROMANCER, hid beneath his veil

Like the stern preacher of his sombre tale;

Virile in strength, yet bashful as a girl,

Prouder than Hester, sensitive as Pearl.

From his mild throng of worshippers released,

Our Concord Delphi sends its chosen priest,

Prophet or poet, mystic, sage, or seer,

By every title always welcome here.

Why that ethereal spirit's frame describe?

You know the race-marks of the Brahmin tribe,

The spare, slight form, the sloping shoulders’ droop,

The calm, scholastic mien, the clerkly stoop,

The lines of thought the sharpened features wear,

Carved by the edge of keen New England air.

List! for he speaks! As when a king would choose

The jewels for his bride, he might refuse

This diamond for its flaw,— find that less bright

Than those, its fellows, and a pearl less white

Than fits her snowy neck, and yet at last,

The fairest gems are chosen, and made fast

In golden fetters; so, with light delays

He seeks the fittest word to fill his phrase;

Nor vain nor idle his fastidious quest,

His chosen word is sure to prove the best.

Where in the realm of thought, whose air is song,

Does he, the Buddha of the West, belong?

He seems a winged Franklin, sweetly wise,

Born to unlock the secrets of the skies;

And which the nobler calling,— if‘ t is fair

Terrestrial with celestial to compare,—

To guide the storm-cloud's elemental flame,

Or walk the chambers whence the lightning came,

Amidst the sources of its subtile fire,

And steal their effluence for his lips and lyre?

If lost at times in vague aerial flights,

None treads with firmer footstep when he lights;

A soaring nature, ballasted with sense,

Wisdom without her wrinkles or pretence,

In every Bible he has faith to read,

And every altar helps to shape his creed.

Ask you what name this prisoned spirit bears

While with ourselves this fleeting breath it shares?

Till angels greet him with a sweeter one

In heaven, on earth we call him EMERSON.

I start; I wake; the vision is withdrawn;

Its figures fading like the stars at dawn;

Crossed from the roll of life their cherished names,

And memory's pictures fading in their frames;

Yet life is lovelier for these transient gleams

Of buried friendships; blest is he who dreams!