Note 4 — Chapter II
Reading edition
The following lines, which were largely quoted by the American Press, were written on the occasion of Canon Prothero unveiling a bust of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in Westminster Abbey, March 1st, 1884:
There is no place in all the great wide world, Where Anglo-Saxon is the spoken tongue, Or where the British flag streams out unfurled, Where patriotic song or ballad's sung,— But there is heard in kindly company With Burns and Hood, with Dibdin, Goldsmith, Moore, The name of him from far across the sea Who sang the noble song, Excelsior. He touched the heart with sweet and silvery rhyme,— He thrilled us with the pathos of his song,— He showed us wild men in the olden time, And painted suff'ring under cruel wrong. Yet ever in the light of truest love He swept with tender touch the sacred lyre; And as he sang he caught, as from above, A blaze of holy, pure, poetic fire. He sang of changing seasons warm and bright, He sang of times that were all cold and grey; He sang of Flowers and of the darkening night, Of Angel footsteps, and of Rainy day;— Of Blacksmith as he by the anvil stood, The Skipper and his daughter drowned at sea, The Maiden stepping into womanhood, And then God's Acre, with its mystery. E'en as he sang, so lived he in his day, Aye striving for some good deed to be done,— To show some thing of beauty by the way, And tell how fame and honour might be won. "His life was beautiful,"[8] so sang his friend, With constant charity of heart and hand; This one more chaplet with his name we blend,— "He was an honour to his native land."[8] To-day we lay a humble tribute bare, 'Tis but a block of marble, in the place, On which a human hand, with cunning rare, Has deftly carved the sweetness of his face. There in the Abbey, where our poets lie, Where many a noble pageant we have seen, Stands now this bust—where all the world may hie— Of him who told us of Evangeline.
George Dalziel.