A great thought came to a great singer's heart,
Out of the grandeur of the changeless hills—
A thought whose greatness e'en in our day fills
Men's minds with nobler feeling. All his art
He lavished on the poem that he wrought,
That it might be, through all the years of time,
An inspiration, to all men, sublime,
And nor for fault of his hand come to naught.
So it hath been. The singer lieth dead;
His words live on. And still the mountains stand,
And all men say who know them, in that land—
And through all ages, it will still be said—
Not gold that perisheth, from deep-hid veins,
They give us, but the thought that aye remains.

Literary Monthly, 1887.