Dedicatory Verses

We found him in that Far-away
that yet to us seems near--
We vagrants of but yesterday
when idlest youth was here,--
When lightest song and laziest mirth
possessed us through and through,
And all the dreamy summer-earth
seemed drugged with morning dew:

When our ambition scarce had shot
a stalk or blade indeed:
Yours,--choked as in the garden-spot
you still deferred to "weed":
Mine,--but a pipe half-cleared of pith--
as now it flats and whines
In sympathetic cadence with
a hiccough in the lines.

Aye, even then--O timely hour!--
the High Gods did confer
In our behalf:--And, clothed in power,
lo, came their Courier--
Not winged with flame nor shod with wind,--
but ambling down the pike,
Horseback, with saddlebags behind,
and guise all human-like.

And it was given us to see,
beneath his rustic rind,
A native force and mastery
of such inspiring kind,
That half unconsciously we made
obeisance.--Smiling, thus
His soul shone from his eyes and laid
its glory over us.

Though, faring still that Far-away
that yet to us seems near,
His form, through mists of yesterday,
fades from the vision here,
Forever as he rides, it is
in retinue divine,--
The hearts of all his time are his,
with your hale heart and mine.