Edmund Clarence Stedman 



tonio of the Gardens and successive 

 companion-pieces. King's speech and 

 writ were iridescent with the imagi- 

 nation of the born romancer. Judge 

 of the statue by the fragment, and 

 think of what was lost to literature 

 by the fact that it was not his voca- 

 tion, but his accomplishment. Nor 

 was it his lot to escape enrollment 

 with the inheritors of unfulfilled re- 

 nown by winning, like the most dis- 

 tinguished of his poet friends, a place 

 in history as one of the arbiters of 

 civilization, and one of those who 

 shape the destinies of their own 

 lands. None the less, the by-play of 

 some men has a quality unattained 

 by a host of devotees who make its 

 acquisition the labor of their worka- 

 day lives. 



Quis desiderio sit pudor / As I 

 humbly stood on one side, that arc- 

 tic morning when the choice and true 

 followed his remains down the aisle, 

 209 



