Poems. John L. Stoddard

From the zenith of their glory

       To their ultimate disgrace—

       And as earth's most perfect master,

       And the noblest of your line,

       You will yield your greatest homage

       To this dying Antonine.

      For he holds a Caesar's sceptre

       In a loving father's hand,

       And his heart and soul are given

       To the welfare of his land;

       Through his justice every nation

       Hath beheld its warfare cease,

       And he leaves to his successor

       Rome's gigantic world at peace.

      Hence these nations now are waiting

       In an anguish of suspense,

       For their future is as doubtful,

       As their love for him intense;

       By the Nile and on the Danube,

       From the Tagus to the Rhine,

       There is mourning among millions

       For the man they deem divine.

      Now the sunset glow is fading,

       And the evening shadows creep

       O'er the ashen face of Caesar,

       As he lies in seeming sleep;

       But he slumbers not; for, faithful

       To his duties, small and great,

       He is not alone the sovereign,

       But the servant of the State.

      Unrebuked, then, his Centurion,

       As the sun-god sinks from sight,

       Makes his wonted way to Caesar

       For the password of the night;

       And great Antonine, though conscious

       That ere dawn his soul must pass,

       As his last, imperial watchword,

       Utters "Aequanimitas!"

      O thou noblest of the Caesars,

       Whose transcendent virtues shine,

       Like a glorious constellation,

       O'er the blood-stained Palatine,

       When the latest sands are running

       From my life's exhausted glass,

       May I have thy calm and courage,

       And thine Aequanimitas!

THE BUTTERFLY

       Table of Contents

      I watched to-day a butterfly,

       With gorgeous wings of golden sheen,

       Flit lightly 'neath a sapphire sky

       Amid the springtime's tender green;—

      A creature so divinely fair,

       So frail, so wraithlike to the sight,

       I feared to see it melt in air,

       As clouds dissolve in morning light.

      With sudden swoop, a brutal boy

       Caught in his cap its fans of gold,

       And forced them down with savage joy

       Upon the path's defiling mould;

      Then cautiously, the ground well scanned,

       He clutched his darkened, helpless prey,

       And, pinched within his grimy hand,

       Withdrew it to the light of day.

      Alas! its fragile bloom was gone,

       Its gracile frame was sorely hurt,

       Its silken pinions drooped forlorn,

       Disfigured by the dust and dirt;

      Its life, a moment since so gay,

       So joyous in its dainty flight,

       Was slowly ebbing now away—

       Its too-brief day eclipsed by night.

      Meantime, the vandal, face aflame,

       Surveyed it dying in his grasp,

       Yet knew no grief nor sense of shame

       In watching for its final gasp.

      At last its sails of gold and brown,

       Of texture fine and colors rare,

       Came, death-struck, slowly fluttering down,

       No more to cleave the sunlit air;

      One happy, harmless being less,

       To bid us dream the world is sweet!

       Gone like a gleam of happiness,

       A glimpse of rapture … incomplete!

      Yet who shall say this creature fair

       In God's sight had a smaller worth

       Than that dull lout who watched it there,

       And in its death found cause for mirth?

      For what, in truth, are we who claim

       An endless life beyond the grave,

       But insects of a larger frame,

       Whose souls may be too small to save?

      Since far-off times, when Cave Men fought

       Like famished brutes for bloody food,

       And through unnumbered centuries sought

       To rear their naked, whelp-like brood,

      How many million men have died,

       From pole to pole through every clime—

       An awful, never-ending tide

       Swept deathward on the shores of Time!

      Like insects swarming in the sun,

       They flutter, struggle, mate, and die,

       And, with their life-work scarce begun,

       Are struck down like the butterfly;

      A million more, a million less,

       What matters it? The Earth rolls on,

       Unmindful of mankind's distress,

       Or if the race be here, or gone.

      Thus rolled our globe ere man appeared,

       And thus will roll, with wrinkled crust,

       Deserted, lifeless, old, and seared,

       When man shall have returned to dust.

      And IT at last shall also die!

       Hence, measured by the eternal scale,

       It ranks but as the butterfly—

       A world, ephemeral, fair and frail.

      Man, insect, earth, or distant star—

       They differ only in degree;

       Their transient lives, or near or far,

       Are moments in eternity!

      Yet somehow to my spirit clings

       The faith that man survives the sod,

       For this poor insect's broken wings

       Have raised my thoughts from earth to God.