Classic Poem

Of all the names that ever pass'd
The lips of woman, child, or fairy,
The gentlest, and most sweetly chaste,
Is that of M ARY .

Yet not too gentle to be loved
By men whose nerves were nerves of iron;
How deeply—tenderly—it moved
The haughty Byron!

Tom Moore, Corypheus of Song!
In verse and love no mean empiric,
How gracefully it floats along!
His beauteous lyric!

Great Burns, the Ploughman-Bard, whose muse
Was swayed by a more rustic fancy,
Unlike your parlor-bards, could choose
The homelier Nancy.

But in his most inspired hour,
Passing the beauties of the dairy,
He struck that note of solemn power
To her—his Mary!

M ARY ! sweet name with virtue clothed,
By dreamy-minded dilettanti,
A sound that might have charmed and soothed
The gloomy Dante.

Or held in its divine control,
Bringing it healing balm when weary,
The wild, impassioned Poet-soul
Of Alfieri.

'Tis true we read of, and despise
The sighing of a certain varlet,
Werther, who sorrowed for the eyes
Of queenly Charlotte:

We hear, too, of the Trojan brawl
That the majestic Paris fell in
With Greece, and famed Achilles, all
For faithless Helen:

We read, with virtuous amaze,
Of good Queen Bess and Leicester, or a
Petrarch inditing Canzonas
To nun-like Laura:

And every day or two, we find
How foplings drain the poisoned chalice—
Fools! perilling their grain of mind
For Grace or Alice!

We know that there are names that please
The varied tastes of man and woman—
Ruth, Annie, Nora, are of these,
All fair and common:

Most welcome, though, to English ears,
Fit for throned Queen or graceful Fairy,
Is that sweet household word that bears
The sound of—M ARY !

It mingles with our childhood's games,
It chastens either birth or bridal;
Mary!—to me the very name's
A perfect Idyl.