MEMORIAL ODE ON THE
DEATH OF LECONTE DE LISLE
On the first of June 1885, the greatest poet of the nineteenth century was borne to his rest amid the lamentations and the applause of his countrymen, and of all to whom either the example of a noble life or the triumph of a genius inaccessible and unapproachable seemed worthy of honour and regard. Many earnest and cordial and admirable words of tribute and thanksgiving and farewell were uttered over the hearse of Victor Hugo; none more memorable than those in which a great poet became the spokesman of all his kind in honour of the greatest of them all. Short and simple as was the speech of M. Leconte de Lisle, none of the longer and more elaborate orations was more genuinely eloquent, more seriously valuable, than the admirably terse and apt expression of gratitude and reverence with which he bade "farewell and hail" in the name of all surviving poets to their beloved and beneficent master. Nor could a fitter and a worthier spokesman have been imagined or desired by the most exacting or the most ambitious devotion or design.—A.C.S.
Beside the lordliest grave in all the world,
A singer crowned with golden years and fame
Spake words more sweet than wreaths of incense curled,
That bade an elder yet and mightier name
157
