Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CENTENARY POEM, by FREDERICK WILLIAM HENRY MYERS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CENTENARY POEM, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: He passed, our wonder, our regret
Last Line: The poet straight from god.
Alternate Author Name(s): Myers, Frederic
Subject(s): Burns, Robert (1759-1796); Poetry & Poets


I

HE passed, our wonder, our regret;
Two generations since have yielded breath,
But bright remembrance glows among us yet,
And glory broadens from the plunge of death.
So sure a fame the sacred poet waits,
That though unreverenced he cross the gates
Which bar the realms of action and of doom;
He murmurs not, content to see
His praise beyond obscurity,
His glory out of gloom;
Nor fitly charges equal fate, but knows
That through conjectured ages far to be,
Meet honour fails not from his tomb, but grows
To plenitude with just posterity.

II

So is it with that memory we set
More fair than any fame to Scotsmen yet;
For neither passed he in mid storm of praise,
As Romulus in thunder, from the throng,
Nor led in honoured ease melodious days,
And from his fulness shook the land with song:
But through stern toil of unrejoicing youth
He reared a spirit open-eyed to truth,
Nor baser ever through calamity,
But keen from deepening care to see
The broad world glad in good, and misery
Prelude and germ of fair eternity.

III

No station his of wealth or honoured birth,
No fame ancestral whence to stir the earth,
Nought save his manhood and high work;
So truth arose in peasant mind
Wherewith all freedom rings,
Of force to scatter to the wind
False pride which station brings;
"Man's exaltation is not that he rules,
Nor can accrue just honour unto fools;
The good is noblest of his kind,
The poet more than kings."

IV

Therefore his people glories in his birth,
And under many a morn his name is great,
And we from many a realm of earth
His honour celebrate
Who forced not song for petty praise,
Nor in feigned passion raved for sympathy,
But lightened into earnest lays,
In truth and rare simplicity;
And knowing man to man is kin,
Sang loud to brothers far and near,
And stood in strength that rose within
Unwarped by praise, unchecked by fear.

V

O silent shapes athwart the darkening sky!
Magnificence of many-folded hills,
Where the dead mist hangs and the lone hawks cry,
Seamed with the white fall of a thousand rills;
O lucid lakes! serene from shore to shore,
With promontories set of solemn pines,
Broad mirrors which the pale stars tremble o'er,
Deep-drawn among the misty mountain lines;
O holy hearths, intemerate of crime!
O tale of martyrs by the flickering sod!
O righteous race, in stedfast toil sublime!
O noblest poem, "Let us worship God!"
Ye taught him, shaping truthful days;
Of you he told to men, for he
From wayside reeds sweet tone could raise
More dear than full accord of symphony,
Knowing that whatsoe'er the poet sings,
Of prototyped in nature or in man,
Moves deeply, though it touch not wrath of kings
Or frantic battle-van.

VI

But most intent the people hears,
Tranced to silence, thrilled to tears,
When the joys of love and fears
Fall in music on their ears;
Stirring noble sympathies,
Waking hope and high desire,
And, to introspective eyes,
Granting glimpse of Heaven's fire.

VII

Nor scorns he such delight, whose heart and eye
Are tempered to the truth of poesy,
Nor following baser natures, would degrade
Aught from that honour which the Eternal made;
Nor ranks this frame the soul's offence,
Nor lovely form the slave of sense;
But knowing good is beauty, hath believed
Beauty is also good, nor oft deceived;
Yea, such a surge of life his pulses fills,
And so abounding passion through him thrills,
That with fierce cries for sympathy,
With longing and with agony,
The glory of his thought goes forth to greet
All fair, though unregarding, he shall meet,
And oft with price the mean endues,
The ignoble holds for rare;
And wooing bright imagined hues
A phantom loveliness pursues,
But knows too late an equal otherwhere.

VIII

So in deep ambrosial night
Falls a star from heaven's height;
Mad for earth, a sliding spark
Down the deadness of the dark,
Falleth, findeth his desire,
Loseth his celestial fire,
Quenched to iron, like his love,
For her face is fair above;
But within her heart is stone,
Adamant and chalcedon.

IX

But he for whom three peoples mourn,
On many a breeze of madness borne,
At many a fancied loss forlorn,
Yet soon as stedfast will began,
And life through firmer manhood ran,
To one prime passion nobly true,
In bliss, but most in sorrow, knew
A woman's perfect love, best boon to man.

X

So lived he, fearing God; his ways
Were dim with penury, uncheered of praise;
Yet not without a noble work begun—
One cry for truth against the might of wrong;
One bolt from thunder-volleys hurled,
On that grim prince who rules the world,
The bright defiance of a lightning song;
O not without a noble work begun,
Failed he in sorrow from the sun,
Fared he to tell the deeds that he had done,
Leaving his people, to the latest days,
A heritage of unforgotten lays.

XI

But nearer aye the hounds of Ruin bayed,
And Error was upon him, that he strayed,
And close at heart remorseful Phrensy preyed,
And pitiless Disaster ran him down;
Till mute Death took him, weary, undismayed,
And calm in hallowed earth his bones were laid;
His the toil, be his the crown!
O great heart by low passions swayed!
O high soul by base cares assayed!
O silence, silence, never to be broken,
Till some dread word from the white throne be spoken!

XII

Ah! yet we trust he findeth end to ill,
Nor in deep peace remembereth misery,
Who in the heart of his loved land is still,
Between the mountains and the clamorous sea.
There all night the deeps are loud,
Billow far to billow roaring,
But he, sleeping in his shroud,
Heareth not the waters pouring.
Yea, though the sun shall wheel a splendrous form
Unseen, above the dim cloud-cataract,
Though lightnings glimmer to the rainy tract,
And all the land be wan with storm,
He knows not, wont of old to see,
In high thought severed from his kind,
Beyond the wrack Divinity,
Jehovah on the wind.

XIII

O story sadder than dethronèd kings—
A poet lost to earth!
Yea, though his land in plenty sings,
Forgetful of her dearth,
And though his people in just laws is great,
And willing fealty to an equal state,
And though her commerce on all ocean thrives,
And every province swarms with happy lives,
Yet weep the great heart hidden in the sod;
All else to man through faithful toil arrives—
The poet straight from God.





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