When State Street homes were stately still;
When out of town was Murray Hill;
In late-deceased “old times”
Of vast, embowering bonnet-shapes,
And creamy-crinkled Canton crapes,
And florid annual-rhymes,
He owned a small suburban seat
Where now you see a modern street,
A monochrome of brown;
The sad “brown-brown” of Dante’s dreams,
A twilight turned to stone, that seems
To weight our city down.
Through leafy chestnuts whitely showed
The pillared front of his abode:
A garden girt it ’round,
Where pungent box did trim enclose
The marigold and cabbage-rose,
And “pi’ny” heavy-crowned.
Yea, whatso sweets, the changing year’s,
He most affected. Gone: but here’s
His face who loved them so.
Old eyes like sherry, warm and mild;
A cheek clear-hued as cheek of child;
Sleek head, a sphere of snow.
His mouth was pious, and his nose
Patrician; with which mould there goes
A disaffected view.
In those sublime, be-oratored,
Spread-eagle days, his soul deplored
So much red-white-and-blue!
In umber ink, with S’s long,
He left behind him censure strong
In stiffest phrases clothed;
But Time—a pleasant jest enough!—
Has turned the tory leaves to buff,
The liberal hue he loathed.
Of many a gentle deed he made
Brief simple record. Never fade
Those everlasting-flowers
That spring up wild by good men’s walks;
Opinions wither on their stalks,
And sere grow Fashion’s bowers.
Erect, be-frilled, in neckcloth tall,
His semblance sits, removed from all
Our needs and noises new;
Released from all the rent we pay
As tenants of the large To-day,
Cool, in a background blue.
And he, beneath a cherub chipped,
Plump, squamous-pinioned, pouting-lipped,
Sleeps calm where Trinity
Points finger dark to clouds that fleet;
A warning, seen from surging street,
A welcome, seen from sea.
There fall, ghosts glorified of tears
Shed for the dead in buried years,
The silver notes of chimes;
And there, with not unreverent hand
Though light, I lay this “greene garlànd,”
This woven wreath of rhymes.