C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813–1892)
The American Pantheon
W
And set a hundred poets round its walls,
Did he suppose their statues would abide
The tests of time, upon their pedestals?
Perchance, and some in brittle plaster cast,
And some mere shades, whose names are scarcely known,
Dii minores of a voiceless past.
Held each within his court a sovereign sway;
Each in his turn his little world enriched,—
The ephemeral poet-laureate of his day.
Lost Pleiads in the firmament of Truth;
Our kings discrowned ere dies the distant shout
That hailed the coronation of their youth.
Thrilling with love, yet wrapped in solitude,
They sit communing with the common Heart
That binds the race in common brotherhood.
And wakes them into verse,—as April turns
The roadside banks to violets, and unsheaths
The forest flowers amid the leaves and ferns.
Or singing robes, at least may hear and dream
While strains from prophet lips come floating down,
Inspired by them to sing some humbler theme.
Rooted in truth, spring up to beauty’s flower.
The spangles of the stage may flout the gems
On queenly breasts—but only for an hour.
The heart, the radiant soul, the eternal truth
And beauty born of harmony, alone
Can claim the garlands of perennial youth.
Should hunger. Though the world his music scorn,
The after-time may hear, as mountains gray
Echo from depths unseen the Alpine horn.
Where poets from Freneau to Fay are set,
I doubt not each in turn has sung a lay
Some hearts are not quite willing to forget.
The costly hours the Muse alone should claim,
Did not some finer thought, some nobler end,
Breathe ardors sweeter than poetic fame?