Bayard Taylor

I.     "And where now, Bayard, will thy footsteps tend?"     My sister asked our guest one winter's day.     Smiling he answered in the Friends' sweet way     Common to both: "Wherever thou shall send!     What wouldst thou have me see for thee?" She laughed,     Her dark eyes dancing in the wood-fire's glow     "Loffoden isles, the Kilpis, and the low,     Unsetting sun on Finmark's fishing-craft."     "All these and more I soon shall see for thee!"     He answered cheerily: and he kept his pledge     On Lapland snows, the North Cape's windy wedge,     And Tromso freezing in its winter sea.     He went and came. But no man knows the    track     Of his last journey, and he comes not back! II.     He brought us wonders of the new and old;     We shared all climes with him. The Arab's tent     To him its story-telling secret lent.     And, pleased, we listened to the tales he told.     His task, beguiled with songs that shall endure,     In manly, honest thoroughness he wrought;     From humble home-lays to the heights of thought     Slowly he climbed, but every step was sure.     How, with the generous pride that friendship hath,     We, who so loved him, saw at last the crown     Of civic honor on his brows pressed down,     Rejoiced, and knew not that the gift was death.     And now for him, whose praise in deafened ears     Two nations speak, we answer but with tears! III.     O Vale of Chester! trod by him so oft,     Green as thy June turf keep his memory. Let     Nor wood, nor dell, nor storied stream forget,     Nor winds that blow round lonely Cedarcroft;     Let the home voices greet him in the far,     Strange land that holds him; let the messages     Of love pursue him o'er the chartless seas     And unmapped vastness of his unknown star     Love's language, heard beyond the loud discourse     Of perishable fame, in every sphere     Itself interprets; and its utterance here     Somewhere in God's unfolding universe     Shall reach our traveller, softening the surprise     Of his rapt gaze on unfamiliar skies!