John Eliot Bowen by Bliss Carman — Read

Here at the desk where once you sat, / Who wander now with poets dead / And summers gone, afield so far, / There sits a stranger in your stead.

Here day by day men come who knew / Your steadfast ways and loved you well; / And every comer with regret / Has some new thing of praise to tell.

The poet old, whose lyric heart / Is fresh as dew and bright as flame, / Longs for "his boy," and finds you not, / And goes the wistful way he came.

Here where you toiled without reproach, / Builded and loved and dreamed and planned, / At every door, on every page, / Lurks the tradition of your hand.

And if to you, like reverie, / There comes a thought of how they fare / Whose footsteps go the round you went / Of noisy street and narrow stair,

Know they have learned a new desire, / Which puts unfaith and faltering by; / And triumph fills their dream because / One life was leal, one hope was high.