The Dead Player

Sure and exact, — the master's quiet touch,
Thus perfect, was his art;
Ambitious, generous, sad, and loving much,
Was his pain-haunted heart.

To him, the blissful burthen of her love
Did stern-browed Fortune give;
In hell, in heaven, beneath life and above,
Such souls as his must live.

Who wears Fame's Tyrian garb, as well must wear
The heavy robe of Grief;
Who bears aloft the palm, must also bear
Hid woundings past belief.

Both he did wear and bear, as well as most
Of Earth's soon-counted few
That stand distinguished from the unknown host
By having work to do.

Souls seek their doom. A costly-freighted bark
That sails a perilous sea,
Rounds every bar, and goes down, in the dark
At port, — e'en such was he.

A classic shade, — he walks the unknown lands
Death-silent and death-dim;
But, like a noble Phidian marble, stands
The memory of him.