Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HAWTHORNE, by EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HAWTHORNE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Harp of new england song
Last Line: The ear still waits for what it did not tell.
Subject(s): Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864); Writing & Writers


HARP of New England Song,
That even in slumber trembled with the touch
Of poets who like the four winds from thee
waken
All harmonies that to thy strings belong, --
Say, wilt thou blame the younger hands too much
Which from thy laurelled resting place have
taken
Thee crowned one in their hold? There is a name
Should quicken thee! No carol Hawthorne
sang,
Yet his articulate spirit, like thine own,
Made answer, quick as flame,
To each breath of the shore from which he sprang,
And prose like his was poesy's high tone.
. . . .
But he whose quickened eye
Saw through New England's life her inmost
spirit, --
Her heart, and all the stays on which it leant, --
Returns not, since he laid the pencil by
Whose mystic touch none other shall inherit!
What though its work unfinished lies? Half-
bent
The rainbow's arch fades out in upper air;
The shining cataract half-way down the height
Breaks into mist; the haunting strain, that fell
On listeners unaware,
Ends incomplete, but through the starry night
The ear still waits for what it did not tell.




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