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(Excerpt)
WHERE the Great Lake’s sunny smiles | |
| Dimple round its hundred isles, | |
| And the mountain’s granite ledge | |
| Cleaves the water like a wedge, | |
| Ringed about with smooth, gray stones, | 5 |
| Rest the giant’s mighty bones. | |
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| Close beside, in shade and gleam, | |
| Laughs and ripples Melvin stream; | |
| Melvin water, mountain-born, | |
| All fair flowers its banks adorn; | 10 |
| All the woodland’s voices meet, | |
| Mingling with its murmurs sweet. | |
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| Over lowlands forest-grown, | |
| Over waters island-strown, | |
| Over silver-sanded beach, | 15 |
| Leaf-locked bay and misty reach, | |
| Melvin stream and burial-heap, | |
| Watch and ward the mountains keep. | |
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| Who that Titan cromlech fills? | |
| Forest-kaiser, lord o’ the hills? | 20 |
| Knight who on the birchen tree | |
| Carved his savage heraldry? | |
| Priest o’ the pine-wood temples dim, | |
| Prophet, sage, or wizard grim? * * * * * | |
| Part thy blue lips, Northern lake! | 25 |
| Moss-grown rocks, your silence break! | |
| Tell the tale, thou ancient tree! | |
| Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee! | |
| Speak, and tell us how and when | |
| Lived and died this king of men! | 30 |
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| Wordless moans the ancient pine; | |
| Lake and mountain give no sign; | |
| Vain to trace this ring of stones; | |
| Vain the search of crumbling bones: | |
| Deepest of all mysteries, | 35 |
| And the saddest, silence is. | |
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| Nameless, noteless, clay with clay | |
| Mingles slowly day by day; | |
| But somewhere, for good or ill, | |
| That dark soul is living still; | 40 |
| Somewhere yet that atom’s force | |
| Moves the light-poised universe. | |
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| Strange that on his burial-sod | |
| Harebells bloom, and golden-rod, | |
| While the soul’s dark horoscope | 45 |
| Holds no starry sign of hope! | |
| Is the Unseen with sight at odds? | |
| Nature’s pity more than God’s? | |
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| Thus I mused by Melvin’s side, | |
| While the summer eventide | 50 |
| Made the woods and inland sea | |
| And the mountains mystery; | |
| And the hush of earth and air | |
| Seemed the pause before a prayer,— | |
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| Prayer for him, for all who rest, | 55 |
| Mother Earth, upon thy breast,— | |
| Lapped on Christian turf, or hid | |
| In rock-cave or pyramid: | |
| All who sleep, as all who live, | |
| Well may need the prayer, “Forgive!” | 60 |
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| Desert-smothered caravan, | |
| Knee-deep dust that once was man, | |
| Battle-trenches ghastly piled, | |
| Ocean-floors with white bones tiled, | |
| Crowded tomb and mounded sod, | 65 |
| Dumbly crave that prayer to God. | |
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| Oh the generations old | |
| Over whom no church-bells tolled, | |
| Christless, lifting up blind eyes | |
| To the silence of the skies! | 70 |
| For the innumerable dead | |
| Is my soul disquieted. | |
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| Where be now these silent hosts? | |
| Where the camping-ground of ghosts? | |
| Where the spectral conscripts led | 75 |
| To the white tents of the dead? | |
| What strange shore or chartless sea | |
| Holds the awful mystery? | |
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| Then the warm sky stooped to make | |
| Double sunset in the lake; | 80 |
| While above I saw with it, | |
| Range on range, the mountains lit; | |
| And the calm and splendor stole | |
| Like an answer to my soul. | |
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| Hear’st thou, O of little faith, | 85 |
| What to thee the mountain saith, | |
| What is whispered by the trees?— | |
| “Cast on God thy care for these; | |
| Trust him, if thy sight be dim: | |
| Doubt for them is doubt of Him. | 90 |
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| “Blind must be their close-shut eyes | |
| Where like night the sunshine lies, | |
| Fiery-linked the self-forged chain | |
| Binding ever sin to pain, | |
| Strong their prison-house of will, | 95 |
| But without He waiteth still. | |
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| “Not with hatred’s undertow | |
| Doth the Love Eternal flow; | |
| Every chain that spirits wear | |
| Crumbles in the breath of prayer; | 100 |
| And the penitent’s desire | |
| Opens every gate of fire. | |
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| “Still Thy love, O Christ arisen, | |
| Yearns to reach these souls in prison! | |
| Through all depths of sin and loss | 105 |
| Drops the plummet of Thy cross! | |
| Never yet abyss was found | |
| Deeper than that cross could sound!” | |
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| Therefore well may Nature keep | |
| Equal faith with all who sleep, | 110 |
| Set her watch of hills around | |
| Christian grave and heathen mound, | |
| And to cairn and kirkyard send | |
| Summer’s flowery dividend. | |
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| Keep, O pleasant Melvin stream, | 115 |
| Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam! | |
| On the Indian’s grassy tomb | |
| Swing, O flowers, your bells of bloom! | |
| Deep below, as high above, | |
| Sweeps the circle of God’s love. | 120 |
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