TO J. L. MOTLEY <br /> <br />YES, we knew we must lose him,--though friendship may claim <br />To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame; <br />Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own, <br />'T is the whisper of love when the bugle has blown. <br /> <br />As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel, <br />As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel, <br />As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string, <br />He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring. <br /> <br />What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom, <br />Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom, <br />While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes <br />That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies! <br /> <br />In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of timid, <br />Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime, <br />There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung, <br />There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue! <br /> <br />Let us hear the proud story which time has bequeathed! <br />From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed! <br />Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom, <br />Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom! <br /> <br />. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . <br /> <br />The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake <br />On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake, <br />To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine, <br />With incense they stole from the rose and the pine. <br /> <br />So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed <br />When the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed: <br />THE TRUE KNIGHT OF LEARNING,--the world holds him dear,-- <br />Love bless him, Joy crown him, God speed his career!<br /><br />Oliver Wendell Holmes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-parting-health/
