Vi

O thou of home the guardian Lar, And, when our earth hath wandered far, Into the cold, and deep snow covers The walks of our New England lovers, Their sweet secluded evening-star! 'Twas with thy rays the English Muse Ripened her mild domestic hues; 'Twas by thy flicker that she conned The fireside wisdom that enrings With light from heaven familiar things; By thee she found the homely faith In whose mild eyes thy comfort stay'th When Death, extinguishing his torch, Gropes for the latch-string in the porch; The love that wanders not beyond His earliest nest, but sits and sings While children smooth his patient wings; Therefore with thee I love to read Our brave old poets; at thy touch how stirs Life in the withered words: how swift recede Time's shadows; and how glows again Through its dead mass the incandescent verse, As when upon the anvils of the brain It glittering lay, cyclopically wrought By the fast-throbbing hammers of the poet's thought! Thou murmurest, too, divinely stirred, The aspirations unattained, The rhythms so rathe and delicate, They bent and strained And broke, beneath the sombre weight Of any airiest mortal word.