| |
| IN a dim nook beneath the street | |
| Where Pine and noisy Nassau meet, | |
| This little book of song I found | |
| In scarred morocco quaintly bound. | |
| Each musty and bemildewed leaf | 5 |
| Bespeaks long years of grime and grief; | |
| Long years,—for on the title page | |
| A dim date tells the volume’s age. | |
| |
| Ah, who was he, the bard that sung | |
| In that dead century’s stately tongue | 10 |
| In those envanished days of yore?— | |
| An empty name—I know no more! | |
| Yet as I read will fancy form | |
| A face whose glow is fresh and warm, | |
| A frank, clear eye wherein I view | 15 |
| A nature open, genial, true. | |
| |
| Mayhap he dreamed of fame, but fate | |
| Has barred to him that temple’s gate; | |
| He loved,—was loved,—for one divines | |
| An answered passion in his lines; | 20 |
| He died, ah, yes, he died, but when | |
| He ceased to walk the ways of men, | |
| Or where his clay with mother clay | |
| Commingles sweetly, who can say! | |
| |
| In pity will I give his book | 25 |
| A not too lonely study nook, | |
| Where kindly gleams of light may play | |
| Across it of a wintry day; | |
| And I will take it down sometimes | |
| To con the prim and polished rhymes.— | 30 |
| Will thus, when the grey years have fled, | |
| Some book of mine be housed and read? | |
| |
