Monody
To have known him, to have loved him
After loneness long;
And then to be estranged in life,
And neither in the wrong;
And now for death to set his seal—
Ease me, a little ease, my song!
By wintry hills his hermit-mound
The sheeted snow-drifts drape,
And houseless there the snow-bird flits
Beneath the fir-trees’ crape:
Glazed now with ice the cloistral vine
That hid the shyest grape.
– Herman Melville (American novelist and poet, 1819-1891)
The poem is probably about the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, a contemporary and sometime friend of Melville's. The two of them were close friends for a while but estranged in later life.
[daily log: walking, 7km]