Monody

Timoleon

To have known him, to have loved himAfter 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-moundThe sheeted snow-drifts drape,And houseless there the snow-bird flitsBeneath the fir-trees’ crape:Glazed now with ice the cloistral vineThat hid the shyest grape.

l. 1: This poem is generally supposed to refer to Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64), whom Melville greatly admired.