At The Funeral Of A Minor Poet

[One of the Bearers soliloquizes:]     . . . Room in your heart for him, O Mother Earth,     Who loved each flower and leaf that made you fair,     And sang your praise in verses manifold     And delicate, with here and there a line     From end to end in blossom like a bough     The May breathes on, so rich it was.    Some thought     The workmanship more costly than the thing     Moulded or carved, as in those ornaments     Found at Mycaene.    And yet Nature's self     Works in this wise; upon a blade of grass,     Or what small note she lends the woodland thrush,     Lavishing endless patience.    He was born     Artist, not artisan, which some few saw     And many dreamed not.    As he wrote no odes     When Croesus wedded or Maecenas died,     And gave no breath to civic feasts and shows,     He missed the glare that gilds more facile men--     A twilight poet, groping quite alone,     Belated, in a sphere where every nest     Is emptied of its music and its wings.     Not great his gift; yet we can poorly spare     Even his slight perfection in an age     Of limping triolets and tame rondeaux.     He had at least ideals, though unreached,     And heard, far off, immortal harmonies,     Such as fall coldly on our ear to-day.     The mighty Zolaistic Movement now     Engrosses us--a miasmatic breath     Blown from the slums.    We paint life as it is,     The hideous side of it, with careful pains,     Making a god of the dull Commonplace.     For have we not the old gods overthrown     And set up strangest idols?    We could clip     Imagination's wing and kill delight,     Our sole art being to leave nothing out     That renders art offensive.    Not for us     Madonnas leaning from their starry thrones     Ineffable, nor any heaven-wrought dream     Of sculptor or of poet; we prefer     Such nightmare visions as in morbid brains     Take shape and substance, thoughts that taint the air     And make all life unlovely.    Will it last?     Beauty alone endures from age to age,     From age to age endures, handmaid of God.     Poets who walk with her on earth go hence     Bearing a talisman.    You bury one,     With his hushed music, in some Potter's Field;     The snows and rains blot out his very name,     As he from life seems blotted: through Time's glass     Slip the invisible and magic sands     That mark the century, then falls a day     The world is suddenly conscious of a flower,     Imperishable, ever to be prized,     Sprung from the mould of a forgotten grave.     'Tis said the seeds wrapt up among the balms     And hieroglyphics of Egyptian kings     Hold strange vitality, and, planted, grow     After the lapse of thrice a thousand years.     Some day, perchance, some unregarded note     Of our poor friend here--some sweet minor chord     That failed to lure our more accustomed ear--     May witch the fancy of an unborn age.     Who knows, since seeds have such tenacity?     Meanwhile he's dead, with scantiest laurel won     And little of our Nineteenth Century gold.     So, take him, Earth, and this his mortal part,     With that shrewd alchemy thou hast, transmute     To flower and leaf in thine unending Springs!