“An Elegy on Franklin Chase Clark, M. D.

(Died April 26, 1915)

Can learned Clark in truth have ceas’d to be,

As Reason bitter voice hath coldly said?
Can vibrant intellect, of earth so free,
Like peasant clay be lost among the dead?

But yesterday the luster of his mind

Has force to pale obscurity away:
In its stern glare, the folly of mankind
Shrunk, like the shadows at the noon of the day

A changing world of strife about him seeth’d;

Ideals less’ning, and the pure disdain’d;
But his soul untainted wisdom breath’d,
And linger’d round him whilst his form remain’d.

A fleeting fame, or momentary praise,

How little wish’d he, and how nobly scorn’d.
How oft were Learning’s deeper, richer ways
Sought out by him, and by hi hand adorn’d.

Whilst empty multitudes in frenzy crave

The glitt’ring glod, or honours of a lord,
In quiet he his best endeavour gave,
Content to serve; unthinking of reward.

Let lesser men display the laurell’d brow,

And beg for homage to the world beneath.
In silence lies a grater master now,
E’en tho’ his laurel be his funeral wreath.

Say not that in the void beyond Death’s door

The mighty and the lowly are the same;
Can boorish dust, in life but little more,
Equality with mental essence claim?

His voice is still’d; his body run its course;

But have those waves of intellect decay’d?
Can sublte energy, eternal force,
As mortal flesh within the tomb be laid?

Have not these waves, sent forth by matchless mind

An endless path in boundless space to run?
To flow unseen; alive, yet undefin’d,
But never, like the body, to be done?

Who can declare that such unbody’d thought,

Sent forth by sages on an earlier time,
Thro’ other, living bodies have not wrought
The good of every age and every clime?

So tell me not that he no more remains,

Whose silent form no word responsive gives:
His body sleeps, reliev’d of earthly pains,
But he, the giding soul, immortal lives!