(_for W. W._)
O my dead comrade—my great dead!
I sat by your bedside—it was the close of day—
I heard the drip of the rain on the roof of the house:
The light shadowed—departing, departing—
You also departing, departing—
You and the light, companions in life, now, too, companions in death,
Retiring to the shadow, carrying elsewhere the benediction of your
sunbeams.
I sat by your bedside. I held your hand:
Once you opened your eyes: O look of recognition! O look of bestowal!
From you to me then passed the commission of the future,
From you to me that minute, from your veins to mine,
Out of the flood of passage, as you slipped away with the tide,
From your hand that touched mine, from your soul that touched mine,
near, O so near—
Filling the heavens with stars—
Entered, shone upon me and out of me, the power of the spring, the seed
of the rose and the wheat,
As of father to son, as of brother to brother, as of god to god!
O my great dead!
You had not gone, you had stayed—in my heart, in my veins,
Reaching through me, through others through me, through all at last, our
brothers,
A hand to the future.
_Frank Dempster Sherman_
Frank Dempster Sherman was born at Peekskill, New York, May 6, 1860.
He entered Columbia University in 1879, where, after graduation and
a subsequent instructorship, he was made adjunct professor in 1891
and Professor of Graphics in 1904. He held the latter position until
his death, which occurred September 19, 1916.
Besides being a writer of airy lyrics and epigrammatic quatrains,
Sherman was an enthusiastic genealogist and a designer (especially
of book-plates) of no little skill. As a poet, his gift was
essentially that of a writer of light verse—fragrant, fragile, yet
seldom too sentimental or brittle. Pleasant is the name for it, a
pleasantness perfumed with a pungent wit.
Sherman never wearied of the little lyric; even the titles of his
volumes are instances of his penchant for the brief melody, for the
sudden snatch of song: _Madrigals and Catches_ (1887), _Lyrics for a
Lute_ (1890), _Little-Folk Lyrics_ (1892), _Lyrics of Joy_ (1904). A
sumptuous collected edition of his poems was published, with an
Introduction by Clinton Scollard, in 1917.