Great mother! they have told us that the snows
Of fifty winters sleep about thy throne,
And buds of spring now blossom with sweet breath
Beneath thy tread. They tell us of the sea,
And other lands, where other children dwell;
Of mighty cities and the gleam of gold,
Of empires wider than the shining plains
Viewed from giant hill, that lift thy throne above
The clouded mountain-tops. They tell us, too,
Of wonders in the home of man; of gods
Of iron and fire made servants, and of fire
Snatched from the clouds to flash man's swiftest
But these are not for us. The forest flower
Droops in the haunts of man; it needs the sky,
And smokeless air, and glances of the sun
Thro' rustling leaves. We perish with the woods;
The plains are all before thee. Send thy sons
To plant and build, and drive their flashing gods,
Startling the forests, till, like ocean's bounds,
Thine empire rolls in splendour from wide east
To widest west, broad fields of gold for thee
And thy white children; but our spirits wait
Amid the silent ages, and we pass
To where our fathers dwell, by silent streams,
And hunt in trackless wilds through cloudless days. The wheels of thy great empire, as it moves
From east to west, from south to icy north,
Crush us to earth. We perish with the woods.
Great mother; if the changing moons have brought
Thee nearer to the darksome bridge that spans
The gulf between this and the eternal day,
If thy path and thy children's be the same,
And thy feet follow where thy fathers went,
Perchance thy soul upon earth's utmost verge,
The eternal sky about thee, and the deeps
Unfathomable beyond-perchance thy soul,
Grown weary with the fever of thy life,
May yearn for song of bird, and sighing pine,
And silent meditation of the woods;
Perchance, when, looking back from infinite skies.
To restless man, thy soul, too, echoes, "Why?
"Where ?" and "Whither?" and thy heart may love
This death-song of thy children, ere they pass
With birds and forests to the silent land.
Perchance the white face told us what was true,
And love and hope wait by the throne of God.
The ruffled lake gives out but broken gleams
Of the clear stars above; so, restless life
May be the troubled reflex of the skies.
The world rolls onward, ever on and on,
Through clouded vast and moans of dying years,
Into the depths of sunset; but the light
Blinds our dim eyes, we cannot see the goal.
The spirit of the world is not for us;
We perish with the pine tree and the bird;
We bow our heads in silence. We must die.
A WAYSIDE cross at set of day
Unto my spirit thus did say
"O soul, my branching arms you see Point four ways to infinity.
"One points to infinite above,
To show the height of heavenly love.
"Two point to infinite width, which shows That heavenly love no limit knows.
"One points to infinite beneath,
To show God's love is under death.
"The four arms join, an emblem sweet That in God's heart all loves will meet."
I thanked the cross as I turned away
For such sweet thoughts in the twilight grey.
THE three Fates sat in a house of birth,
Ah, well a day; ah, well a day;
Their eyes were bright, but not with mirth—
They have no love for the sons of earth-
And their lips were parched and gray.
Their gray locks hung from brow to chin,
Ah, well a day; ah, well a day;
One held the distaff, and one did spin,
And one held shears in her fingers thin;
Three silent hags were they.
We saw not the thread which the sisters spun, Ah, well a day; ah, well a day;
Nor whether in white or in black begun,
But on her with the shears, that elder one,
Our eyes were fixed alway.
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