In descriptive pieces like "Keramos" and "The Hanging
of the Crane," in such personal and occasional verses as "The
Herons of Elmwood," "The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz," and the
noble "Morituri Salutamus" written for his classmates in 1875, he
exhibits his tenderness of affection and all the ripeness of his
technical skill. But it was as a lyric poet, after all, that he
won and held his immense audience throughout the English-speaking
world. Two of the most popular of all his early pieces, "The
Psalm of Life" and "Excelsior," have paid the price of a too apt
adjustment to the ethical mood of an earnest moment in our
national life. We have passed beyond them. And many readers may
have outgrown their youthful pleasure in "Maidenhood," "The Rainy
Day," "The Bridge," "The Day is Done," verses whose simplicity
lent themselves temptingly to parody. Yet such poems as "The
Belfry of Bruges," "Seaweed," "The Fire of Driftwood," "The
Arsenal at Springfield," "My Lost Youth," "The Children's Hour,"
and many another lyric, lose nothing with the lapse of time.
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