ey used to sup,
And down upon the dust of earth outcast
The dregs remaining of the ancient cup,
Then turn to wakeful prayer and worthy act.
The Dead, upon their awful 'vantage ground,
The sun not in their faces, shall abstract
No more our strength; we will not be discrowned
As guardians of their crowns, nor deign transact
A barter of the present, for a sound
Of good so counted in the foregone days.
O Dead, ye shall no longer cling to us
With rigid hands of desiccating praise,
And drag us backward by the garment thus,
To stand and laud you in long-drawn virelays!
We will not henceforth be oblivious
Of our own lives, because ye lived before,
Nor of our acts, because ye acted well.
We thank you that ye first unlatched the door,
But will not make it inaccessible
By thankings on the threshold any more.
We hurry onward to extinguish hell
With our fresh souls, our younger hope, and God's
Maturity of purpose. Soon shall we
Die also! and, that then our periods
Of life may round themselves to memory
As smoothly as on our graves the burial-sods,
We now must look to it to excel as ye,
And bear our age as far, unlimited
By the last mind-mark; so, to be invoked
By future generations, as their Dead.

'T is true that when the dust of death has choked
A great man's voice, the common words he said
Turn oracles, the common thoughts he yoked
Like horses, draw like griffins: this is true
And acceptable. I, too, should desire,
When men make record, with the flowers they strew,
"Savonarola's soul went out in fire
Upon our Grand-duke's piazza,[5] and burned through
A moment first, or ere he did expire,
The veil betwixt the right and wrong, and showed
How near God sat and judged the judges there,--"
Upon the self-same pavement overstrewed
To cast my violets with as reverent care,
And prove that all the winters which have snowed
Cannot snow out the scent from stones and air,
Of a sincere man's virtues. This was he,
Savonarola, who, while Peter sank
With his whole boat-load, called courageously
"Wake Christ, wake Christ!"--who, having tried the tank
Of old church-waters used for baptistry
Ere Luther came to spill them, swore they stank;
Who also by a princely deathbed cried,
"Loose Florence, or God will not loose thy soul!"
Then fell back the Magnificent and died
Beneat