Does he want you down there

         In the Nether Glooms where

      The hours may be a dragging load upon him,

         As he hears the axle grind

            Round and round

         Of the great world, in the blind

            Still profound

      Of the night-time?  He might liven at the sound

      Of your string, revealing you had not forgone him.

         In the gallery west the nave,

         But a few yards from his grave,

      Did you, tucked beneath his chin, to his bowing

         Guide the homely harmony

            Of the quire

         Who for long years strenuously —

            Son and sire —

      Caught the strains that at his fingering low or higher

      From your four thin threads and eff-holes came outflowing.

         And, too, what merry tunes

         He would bow at nights or noons

      That chanced to find him bent to lute a measure,

         When he made you speak his heart

            As in dream,

         Without book or music-chart,

            On some theme

      Elusive as a jack-o’-lanthorn’s gleam,

      And the psalm of duty shelved for trill of pleasure.

         Well, you can not, alas,

         The barrier overpass

      That screens him in those Mournful Meads hereunder,

         Where no fiddling can be heard

            In the glades

         Of silentness, no bird

            Thrills the shades;

      Where no viol is touched for songs or serenades,

      No bowing wakes a congregation’s wonder.

         He must do without you now,

         Stir you no more anyhow

      To yearning concords taught you in your glory;

         While, your strings a tangled wreck,

            Once smart drawn,

         Ten worm-wounds in your neck,

            Purflings wan

      With dust-hoar, here alone I sadly con

      Your present dumbness, shape your olden story.

         This statue of Liberty, busy man,

            Here erect in the city square,

      I have watched while your scrubbings, this early morning,

               Strangely wistful,

               And half tristful,

            Have turned her from foul to fair;

         With your bucket of water, and mop, and brush,

            Bringing her out of the grime

      That has smeared her during the smokes of winter

               With such glumness

               In her dumbness,

            And aged her before her time.

         You have washed her down with motherly care —

            Head, shoulders, arm, and foot,

      To the very hem of the robes that drape her —

               All expertly

               And alertly,

            Till a long stream, black with soot,

         Flows over the pavement to the road,

            And her shape looms pure as snow:

      I read you are hired by the City guardians —

               May be yearly,

               Or once merely —

            To treat the statues so?

         “Oh, I’m not hired by the Councilmen

            To cleanse the statues here.

      I do this one as a self-willed duty,

               Not as paid to,

               Or at all made to,

            But because the doing is dear.”

         Ah, then I hail you brother and friend!

            Liberty’s knight divine.

      What you have done would have been my doing,

               Yea, most verily,

               Well, and thoroughly,

            Had but your courage been mine!

         “Oh I care not for Liberty’s mould,

            Liberty charms not me;

      What’s Freedom but an idler’s vision,

               Vain, pernicious,

               Often vicious,

            Of things that cannot be!

         “Memory it is that brings me to this —

            Of a daughter – my one sweet own.

      She grew a famous carver’s model,

               One of the fairest

               And of the rarest: —

            She sat for the figure as shown.

         “But alas, she died in this distant place

            Before I was warned to betake

      Myself to her side!.. And in love of my darling,

               In love of the fame of her,

               And the good name of her,

            I do this for her sake.”

         Answer I gave not.  Of that form

            The carver was I at his side;

      His child, my model, held so saintly,

               Grand in feature,

               Gross in nature,

            In the dens of vice had died.

      I think of the slope where the rabbits fed,

         Of the periwinks’ rockwork lair,

      Of the fuchsias ringing their bells of red —