The Burden of Time
Before the seas and mountains were brought forth,
I reigned. I hung the universe in space,
I capped earth's poles with ice to South and North,
And set the moving tides their bounds and place.
I smoothed the granite mountains with my hand,
My fingers gave the continents their form;
I rent the heavens and loosed upon the land
The fury of the whirlwind and the storm.
I stretched the dark sea like a nether sky
Fronting the stars between the ice-clad zones;
I gave the deep his thunder; the Most High
Knows well the voice that shakes His mountain thrones.
I trod the ocean caverns black as night,
And silent as the bounds of outer space,
And where great peaks rose darkly towards the light
I planted life to root and grow apace.
Then through a stillness deeper than the grave's,
The coral spires rose slowly one by one,
Until the white shafts pierced the upper waves
And shone like silver in the tropic sun.
I ploughed with glaciers down the mountain glen,
And graved the iron shore with stream and tide;
I gave the bird her nest, the lion his den,
The snake long jung~le-grass wherein to hide.
In lonely gorge and over hill and plain,
I sowed the giant forests of the world;
The great earth like a human heart in pain
Has quivered with the meteors I have hurled.
I plunged whole continents beneath the deep,
And left them sepulchred a million years;
I called, and lo, the drowned lands rose from sleep,
Sundering the waters of the hemispheres.
I am the lord and arbiter of man --
I hold and crush between my finger-tips
Wild hordes that drive the desert caravan,
Great nations that go down to sea in ships.
In sovereign scorn I tread the races down,
As each its puny destiny fulfils,
On plain and island, or where huge cliffs frown,
Wrapt in the deep thought of the ancient hills.
The wild sea searches vainly round the land
For those proud fleets my arm has swept away;
Vainly the wind along the desert sand
Calls the great names of kings who once held sway.
Yea, Nineveh and Babylon the great
Are fallen -- like ripe ears at harvest-tide;
I set my heel upon their pomp and state,
The people's serfdom and the monarch's pride.
One doom waits all -- art, speech, law, gods, and men,
Forests and mountains, stars and shining sun, --
The hand that made them shall unmake again,
I curse them and they wither one by one.
Waste altars, tombs, dead cities where men trod,
Shall roll through space upon the darkened globe,
Till I myself be overthrown, and God
Cast off creation like an outworn robe.
poem by Frederick George Scott
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Lament for Atlantis
Mighty gods, O rulers of all beneath ye,
hear this lamentation I bear, that speaks of
fair Atlantis, place of my birthplace, lost now,
drowned by the ocean.
Lonely lies the land of Atlantis, lost now
under ocean. Once it was full of wonders,
once it was full of people and temples, drowned now
under the deep waves.
Drowned, she lies, lost under the ocean's broad reach;
once a queen, now draped in a corpse's wound sheet,
fair Atlantis lay as a pearl above all pearls,
above all known lands.
Once an empress over all lands, she lies drowned;
deep beneath the ocean she lies, she lies low
under endless waves while the years and the ages
pass like a swift wind.
No-one comes to comfort her, ease her sorrow.
All her friends have left her alone in sorrow,
all the lands have dealt with her treacherously,
left her unmourned, lorn.
Fair Atlantis lies in the ocean's deep breast
while the nations come no more, under dyed sails,
bring no gifts of gold or else costly cargoes
under the dyed sails.
All her temples lie in the ocean's deep breast,
all her festivals and sacred statues,
all her sacred slaves and her holy virgins
lie in its deep breast.
All her sacred groves, and her many fair fields
lie beneath the ocean; and all her cities
lie beneath the waves that ye caused to rise up,
drown it in one day.
All her enemies have become as great kings,
saying: 'Fair Atlantis is lost for all time,
let us rule the Earth while she lies destroyed, dead
under the deep waves.'
Fair Atlantis calls to her former fair friends:
'High I raised you, gave you the gifts of great lore,
yet you all exult in my sudden downfall,
strut like a vain cock.'
How the countries envy her glories, lost now
while beneath the ocean she lies, forlorn, lost,
when her people lived as do heroes god-blessed,
basking in glory.
When her people fell to the ocean waves,
how the countries mocked at her fall to harsh fate,
how the countries mocked at her, lost to deep waves
rolling above her.
Is her fate naught to the mighty nations?
Fair she rose and ruled, but now desolate, drowned
deep beneath waves, fallen from pride that whelms all,
which will befall them.
For my land, I weep with my bitter, bleak eyes,
for my birthplace, lost for all time, and drowned now.
Nothing heals my heart in its endless sorrow,
mourning my lost land.
See: her enemies have prevailed, are puffed proud;
see: her children wander the world, are scattered
over many lands, for her enemies rule
over all known lands.
Let the lands' pride lead to their needed downfall,
let them drown so deep in their insolent pride,
till the world is free from the taint of humans
lost to redemption.
poem by Phillip Ellis
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The Creation
And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely--
I'll make me a world.
And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.
Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That's good!
Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That's good!
Then God himself stepped down--
And the sun was on his right hand,
And the moon was on his left;
The stars were clustered about his head,
And the earth was under his feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.
Then he stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And he spat out the seven seas--
He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed--
He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled--
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.
Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.
Then God raised his arm and he waved his hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!
And quicker than God could drop his hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said: That's good!
Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that he had made.
He looked at his sun,
And he looked at his moon,
And he looked at his little stars;
He looked on his world
With all its living things,
And God said: I'm lonely still.
Then God sat down--
On the side of a hill where he could think;
By a deep, wide river he sat down;
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I'll make me a man!
Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;
This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in is his own image;
Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen.Amen.
poem by James Weldon Johnson
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The Land Of The Dawning
Darkrose her shore in seas of amethyst
By tropic breezes kissed,
A summer land in watery wastes forlorn,
Her ranges floating in the snow-white mist
And gold of early morn.
The tides of Empire ebbed and flowed afar;
The thrones of nations in the dust were hurled,
Silent she slept beneath the morning star,
A virgin world.
Love, Birth, and Death, the stress of Age and Race,
Changed not her maiden face—
Unstocked her pastures and untilled her soil—
She who for labour builds a throne apace
Saw not her people toil;
Down the low valleys, up the stormy steeps,
Careless they roamed at will: the land was free
From desert stark to where the mangrove sleeps
Upon the sea.
There dropped no anchor at her river bars
Beneath the quiet stars;
No wandering sail her silent waters swept;
By waste and scrub, o’er plain and rocky scars
No alien footstep crept;
In feathery billows of her grassy seas
Some lonely mountain stretched its capes of blue;
Only the heavens above her and the breeze
Her secrets knew.
Where the wild grass grew rank on slopes forlorn
Rise fields of yellow corn,
And purple lucerne-bloom makes sweet the air;
The sullen mountain, lost in mists of morn,
Its golden heart lays bare.
Spoils of her pastures crowd full many a mart;
Her glittering treasure calls to many a land;
She has no secrets for the daring heart
And strong brown hand.
The smoke and thunder of her cities rise
To the same careless skies;
Her arteries thread the same wide sunlit leas,
Her fleets stretch forth their wings of enterprise
O’er the same summer seas.
She to the Nations cries: “No Past, no Fame,
No Memories quicken round my flag unfurled;
The mightier, therefore, shall I carve my name
Upon the World.”
poem by George Essex Evans
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The Storm
O GRIP the earth, ye forest trees,
Grip well the earth to-night,
The Storm-God rides across the seas
To greet the morning light.
All clouds that wander through the skies
Are tangled in his net,
The frightened stars have shut their eyes,
The breakers fume and fret.
The birds that cheer the woods all day
Now tremble in their nests,
The giant branches round them sway,
The wild wind never rests.
The squirrel and the cunning fox
Have hurried to their holes,
Far off, like distant earthquake shocks,
The muffled thunder rolls.
In scores of hidden woodland dells,
Where no rough winds can harm,
The timid wild-flowers toss their bells
In reasonless alarm.
Only the mountains rear their forms,
Silent and grim and bold;
To them the voices of the storms
Are as a tale re-told.
They saw the stars in heaven hung,
They heard the great Sea's birth,
They know the ancient pain that wrung
The entrails of the Earth.
Sprung from great Nature's royal lines,
They share her deep repose,–
Their rugged shoulders robed in pines,
Their foreheads crowned with snows.
But now there comes a lightning flash,
And now on hill and plain
The charging clouds in fury dash,
And blind the world with rain.
poem by Frederick George Scott
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Wahonomin
GREAT mother! from the depths of forest wilds,
From mountain pass and burning sunset plain,
We, thine unlettered children of the woods,
Upraise to thee the everlasting hymn
Of nature, language of the skies and seas,
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Voice of the birds and sighing of the pine
In wintry wastes. We know none other tongue,
Nor the smooth speech that, like the shining leaves,
Hides the rough stems beneath. We bring our song,
Wood-fragrant, rough, yet autumn-streaked with love,
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And lay it as a tribute at thy feet.
But should it vex thee thus to hear us sing,
Sad in the universal joy that crowns
This year of years, and shouldst thou deem our voice
But death-cry of the ages that are past,
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Bear with us—say, "My children of the woods,
In language learnt from bird and wood and stream,
From changing moons and stars and misty lakes,
Pour forth their love, and lay it at my feet;
The voice is wild and strange, untuned to ear
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Of majesty, ill-timed to fevered pulse
Of this young age, and meteor-souls that flash
New paths upon night's dome; yet will I hear
This singing of my children ere they die."
Great mother! thou art wise, they say, and good,
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And reignest like the moon in autumn skies,
The world about thy feet. We have not seen
Thy face, nor the wild seas of life that surge
Around thy throne; but we have stood by falls,
Deep-shadowed in the silence of the woods,
30
And heard the water-thunders, and have said,
Thus is the voice of men about our Queen.
What is the red man but the forest stream,
The cry of screech-owl in the desert wilds?
This flood that overflows the hills and plains
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Is not for us. Back, Westward, Northward, ay,
Up to eternal winter 'neath the stars,
Our path must be in silence, till the snows
And sun and wind have bleached our children's bones.
The red must go; the axe and plough and plane
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Are not for him. We perish with the pine,
We vanish in the silence of the woods;
Our footsteps, like the war-trail in the snow,
Grow fainter while the new spring buds with life.
Great mother! the white faces came with words
45
Of love and hope, and pointed to the skies,
And in the sunrise splendour set the throne
Of the Great Spirit, and upon the cross
Showed us His Son, and asked a throne for Him.
Their speech was music; but in camp at night
50
We brooded o'er the matter round the fire,
The shadowy pines about us, and the stars,
Set in the silent heavens, looking down.
We brooded o'er the matter days and years,
For thus each thought and thus each spake in words:
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"We children of the woods have lived and died
In these our forests, since the first moon tipped
Their thousand lakes and rivers with her beams,
Pale silver in the fading sky of even.
Our fathers' faces kindled in the glow
60
Of setting suns; they read the starlit sky;
They heard the Spirit's breathing on the storm,
And on the quaking earth they felt His tread;
But never yet the story of His Son
Was wafted to them from the sighing woods,
65
Or bird or stream. Our fathers' God is ours;
And as for these new words, we watch and wait."
Great mother! we have waited days and years,
Thro' spring and summer—summer, autumn, spring;
Brooding in silence, for anon we dreamed
70
A bird's voice in our hearts half sung, "'Tis true."
We listened and we watched the pale face come,
When, lo! new gods came with them—gods of iron
And fire, that shook the forests as they rushed,
Filling with thunder and loud screeching, plains,
75
Mountains, and woods, and dimming with their breath
The shining skies. These new gods, who were they,
That came devouring all, and blackening earth
And sky with smoke and thunder? We knew not,
But fled in terror further from the face
80
Of these white children and their gods of iron;
We heard no more their story of the Son,
And words of love. Their own lives were not love,
But war concealed and fire beneath the ash.
Thus ever now the burden of our speech—
85
We perish with the pine tree and the bird,
We vanish in the silence of the woods,
The white man's hunting-ground, it is not ours;
We care not for his gods of iron and fire;
Our home is in the trackless wilds, the depths
90
Of mountain solitudes, by starlit lakes,
By noise of waters in the unchanging woods.
Great mother! we have wondered that thy sons,
Thy pale sons, should have left thy side and come
To these wild plains, and sought the haunts of bears
95
And red men. Why their battle with the woods?
Whither they go upon their gods of iron,
Out of the golden sunrise to the mists
Of purple evening in the setting west?
Their lives have scarce as many moons as ours,
100
Nor happier are. We know not what they seek;
For death's cold finger chills their fevered life,
As in the wilds he stills the meanest worm,
And death flies with them over all their paths,
And waits them in the heart of wildest waste;
105
They cannot break his power. Forgive these thoughts
If, as they rise like mists, they dim the gold
That zones thy brow. They came to us at night,
As we have sat in council round the fire;
They seemed the echo of the sighing pines
110
Far in our soul. One evening rose a chief,
White-headed, bowed with years, one hand on staff,
One on death's arm, preparing for the way.
"My sons," he said, "these people are not wise.
We bide our time, and they will pass away;
115
Then shall the red man come like bird in spring,
And build the broken camp, and hunt and fish
In his old woods. These people pass away;
Then shall the red man come like bird in spring,
And build the broken camp, and hunt and fish
120
In his old woods. These people pass away;
For I have thought through many nights and days,
And wondered what they seek; and now I know,
And knowing, say these people are not wise.
They found these plains beneath the burning west,
125
And westward, ever westward, still they press,
Seeking the shining meadows of the land
Where the sun sleeps, and, folded 'neath his wings,
The happy spirits breathe eternal day.
But I have lived thro' five score changing years,
130
And I have talked with wintry-headed chiefs,
And I have heard that kingdom is not reached
Thro' woods and plains, but by the bridge of death.
This people is not wise; we bide our time."
Great mother! they have told us that the snows
135
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,
140
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
145
Snatched from the clouds to flash man's swiftest thought;
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;
150
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
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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
160
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,
165
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,
170
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?"
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"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.
180
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,
185
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.
poem by Frederick George Scott
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In Memory of Edward Butler
A voice of grave, deep emphasis
Is in the woods to-night;
No sound of radiant day is this,
No cadence of the light.
Here in the fall and flights of leaves
Against grey widths of sea,
The spirit of the forests grieves
For lost Persephone.
The fair divinity that roves
Where many waters sing
Doth miss her daughter of the groves —
The golden-headed Spring.
She cannot find the shining hand
That once the rose caressed;
There is no blossom on the land,
No bird in last year’s nest.
Here, where this strange Demeter weeps —
This large, sad life unseen —
Where July’s strong, wild torrent leaps
The wet hill-heads between,
I sit and listen to the grief,
The high, supreme distress,
Which sobs above the fallen leaf
Like human tenderness!
Where sighs the sedge and moans the marsh,
The hermit plover calls;
The voice of straitened streams is harsh
By windy mountain walls;
There is no gleam upon the hills
Of last October’s wings;
The shining lady of the rills
Is with forgotten things.
Now where the land’s worn face is grey
And storm is on the wave,
What flower is left to bear away
To Edward Butler’s grave?
What tender rose of song is here
That I may pluck and send
Across the hills and seas austere
To my lamented friend?
There is no blossom left at all;
But this white winter leaf,
Whose glad green life is past recall,
Is token of my grief.
Where love is tending growths of grace,
The first-born of the Spring,
Perhaps there may be found a place
For my pale offering.
For this heroic Irish heart
We miss so much to-day,
Whose life was of our lives a part,
What words have I to say?
Because I know the noble woe
That shrinks beneath the touch —
The pain of brothers stricken low —
I will not say too much.
But often in the lonely space
When night is on the land,
I dream of a departed face —
A gracious, vanished hand.
And when the solemn waters roll
Against the outer steep,
I see a great, benignant soul
Beside me in my sleep.
Yea, while the frost is on the ways
With barren banks austere,
The friend I knew in other days
Is often very near.
I do not hear a single tone;
But where this brother gleams,
The elders of the seasons flown
Are with me in my dreams.
The saintly face of Stenhouse turns —
His kind old eyes I see;
And Pell and Ridley from their urns
Arise and look at me.
By Butler’s side the lights reveal
The father of his fold,
I start from sleep in tears, and feel
That I am growing old.
Where Edward Butler sleeps, the wave
Is hardly ever heard;
But now the leaves above his grave
By August’s songs are stirred.
The slope beyond is green and still,
And in my dreams I dream
The hill is like an Irish hill
Beside an Irish stream.
poem by Henry Kendall
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A Morning Fancy
I drifted (or I seemed to) in a boat
Upon the surface of a shoreless sea
Whereon no ship nor anything did float,
Save only the frail bark supporting me;
And that-it was so shadowy-seemed to be
Almost from out the very vapors wrought
Of the great ocean underneath its keel;
And all that blue profound appeared as naught
But thicker sky, translucent to reveal,
Miles down, whatever through its spaces glided,
Or at the bottom traveled or abided.
Great cities there I saw-of rich and poor,
The palace and the hovel; mountains, vales,
Forest and field, the desert and the moor,
Tombs of the good and wise who'd lived in jails,
And seas of denser fluid, white with sails
Pushed at by currents moving here and there
And sensible to sight above the flat
Of that opaquer deep. Ah, strange and fair
The nether world that I was gazing at
With beating heart from that exalted level,
And-lest I founder-trembling like the devil!
The cities all were populous: men swarmed
In public places-chattered, laughed and wept;
And savages their shining bodies warmed
At fires in primal woods. The wild beast leapt
Upon its prey and slew it as it slept.
Armies went forth to battle on the plain
So far, far down in that unfathomed deep
The living seemed as silent as the slain,
Nor even the widows could be heard to weep.
One might have thought their shaking was but laughter;
And, truly, most were married shortly after.
Above the wreckage of that silent fray
Strange fishes swam in circles, round and round
Black, double-finned; and once a little way
A bubble rose and burst without a sound
And a man tumbled out upon the ground.
Lord! 'twas an eerie thing to drift apace
On that pellucid sea, beneath black skies
And o'er the heads of an undrowning race;
And when I woke I said-to her surprise
Who came with chocolate, for me to drink it:
'The atmosphere is deeper than you think it.'
poem by Ambrose Bierce
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The Cable Hymn
O lonely bay of Trinity,
O dreary shores, give ear!
Lean down unto the white-lipped sea
The voice of God to hear!
From world to world His couriers fly,
Thought-winged and shod with fire;
The angel of His stormy sky
Rides down the sunken wire.
What saith the herald of the Lord?
'The world's long strife is done;
Close wedded by that mystic cord,
Its continents are one.
'And one in heart, as one in blood,
Shall all her peoples be;
The hands of human brotherhood
Are clasped beneath the sea.
'Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain
And Asian mountains borne,
The vigor of the Northern brain
Shall nerve the world outworn.
'From clime to clime, from shore to shore,
Shall thrill the magic thread;
The new Prometheus steals once more
The fire that wakes the dead.'
Throb on, strong pulse of thunder! beat
From answering beach to beach;
Fuse nations in thy kindly heat,
And melt the chains of each!
Wild terror of the sky above,
Glide tamed and dumb below!
Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove,
Thy errands to and fro.
Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord,
Beneath the deep so far,
The bridal robe of earth's accord,
The funeral shroud of war!
For lo! the fall of Ocean's wall
Space mocked and time outrun;
And round the world the thought of all
Is as the thought of one!
The poles unite, the zones agree,
The tongues of striving cease;
As on the Sea of Galilee
The Christ is whispering, Peace!
. . . . .
'Glad prophecy! to this at last,'
The Reader said, 'shall all things come.
Forgotten be the bugle's blast,
And battle-music of the drum.
'A little while the world may run
Its old mad way, with needle-gun
And iron-clad, but truth, at last, shall reign
The cradle-song of Christ was never sung in vain!'
Shifting his scattered papers, 'Here,'
He said, as died the faint applause,
'Is something that I found last year
Down on the island known as Orr's.
I had it from a fair-haired girl
Who, oddly, bore the name of Pearl,
(As if by some droll freak of circumstance,)
Classic, or wellnigh so, in Harriet Stowe's romance.'
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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The Secret Key
There is a magic kingdom of strange powers,
Thought-hidden, lit by other stars than ours;
And, when a wanderer through its mazes brings
Word of things seen, men say: “A poet sings.”
Its gates are guarded in a sterile land—
Mountain and deep morass, and shifting sand;
Storm-barred are they, and may not opened be
Save by the hand that finds the secret key.
That key, some say, lies in the sunset glow,
Or the white arc of dawn, or where the flow
Of some lone river stems the shoreward wave
In shuddering silver on its ocean grave.
Some say that when the wind wars with the sea,
In that stern music, one may find the key;
Or, in green glooms of forests, where the pine
Uplifts her spear amid great wreaths of vine;
Or, where the streaming mist’s white rollers climb
The dark ravine and precipice sublime—
A filmy sea that twines and intertwines
Wreathes the low hills, and veils the mighty lines
Of sovran mountains, crimsoned and aglow
In crystal pomp, crested with jewelled snow;
But still, with souls afire, men seek that land,
And die in deep morass and shifting sand.
To those alone its iron gates are free,
Who find, within their hearts, the secret key;
For Earth, with all the colour of her day,
Is not their country—that lies far away.
poem by George Essex Evans
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Wamblee
High up on a rocky crag,
Wamblee, near to the cliff edge
sat cross legged in a circle on the ground
calling softly to the four winds.
His long plaits, threaded with silver
lay beneath feathers running down his back.
Far below him the canyon stretched out
dusty and red hot.
As the hypnotic chant of his words
caught the warm air riding the canyon top
his heart took flight
soaring above the high dusty plain.
Born on the wind,
his eagle wings outstretched
he sailed aloft snow covered mountains
glinting in the light of Grandfather Sun.
South through deep valleys,
lush with green and wonder,
feeling the rhythm of the world
beneath his feathers.
Across the turbulent southern ocean
full of the whale's song,
eastward across the great African Plain,
northward towards the Northern lights.
Onward and upward
feeling the firmament and the dawn of stars
he flew between darkness and light.
There, in that sacred space between
the creator and the created
Wamblee saw with clear vision
the beauty of the Great Spirit
laid out before him in the earth below
and the heavens above.
poem by Diana Rosser
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The Nile
Out of the unknown South,
Through the dark lands of drouth,
Far wanders ancient Nile in slumber gliding:
Clear-mirrored in his dream
The deeds that haunt his stream
Flash out and fade like stars in midnight sliding.
Long since, before the life of man
Rose from among the lives that creep,
With Time's own tide began
That still mysterious sleep,
Only to cease when Time shall reach the eternal deep.
From out his vision vast
The early gods have passed,
They waned and perished with the faith that made them;
The long phantasmal line
Of Pharaohs crowned divine
Are dust among the dust that once obeyed them.
Their land is one mute burial mound,
Save when across the drifted years
Some chant of hollow sound,
Some triumph blent with tears,
From Memnon's lips at dawn wakens the desert meres.
O Nile, and can it be
No memory dwells with thee
Of Grecian lore and the sweet Grecian singer?
The legions' iron tramp,
The Goths' wide-wandering camp,
Had these no fame that by thy shore might linger?
Nay, then must all be lost indeed,
Lost too the swift pursuing might
That cleft with passionate speed
Aboukir's tranquil night,
And shattered in mid-swoop the great world-eagle's flight.
Yet have there been on earth
Spirits of starry birth,
Whose splendour rushed to no eternal setting:
They over all endure,
Their course through all is sure,
The dark world's light is still of their begetting.
Though the long past forgotten lies,
Nile! in thy dream remember him,
Whose like no more shall rise
Above our twilight's rim,
Until the immortal dawn shall make all glories dim.
For this man was not great
By gold or kingly state,
Or the bright sword, or knowledge of earth's wonder;
But more than all his race
He saw life face to face,
And heard the still small voice above the thunder.
O river, while thy waters roll
By yonder vast deserted tomb,
There, where so clear a soul
So shone through gathering doom,
Thou and thy land shall keep the tale of lost Khartoum.
poem by Sir Henry Newbolt
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The Atavist
What are you doing here, Tom Thorne, on the white top-knot o' the world,
Where the wind has the cut of a naked knife and the stars are rapier keen?
Hugging a smudgy willow fire, deep in a lynx robe curled,
You that's a lord's own son, Tom Thorne -- what does your madness mean?
Go home, go home to your clubs, Tom Thorne! home to your evening dress!
Home to your place of power and pride, and the feast that waits for you!
Why do you linger all alone in the splendid emptiness,
Scouring the Land of the Little Sticks on the trail of the caribou?
Why did you fall off the Earth, Tom Thorne, out of our social ken?
What did your deep damnation prove? What was your dark despair?
Oh with the width of a world between, and years to the count of ten,
If they cut out your heart to-night, Tom Thorne, her name would be graven there!
And you fled afar for the thing called Peace, and you thought you would find it here,
In the purple tundras vastly spread, and the mountains whitely piled;
It's a weary quest and a dreary quest, but I think that the end is near;
For they say that the Lord has hidden it in the secret heart of the Wild.
And you know that heart as few men know, and your eyes are fey and deep,
With a "something lost" come welling back from the raw, red dawn of life:
With woe and pain have you greatly lain, till out of abysmal sleep
The soul of the Stone Age leaps in you, alert for the ancient strife.
And if you came to our feast again, with its pomp and glee and glow,
I think you would sit stone-still, Tom Thorne, and see in a daze of dream,
A mad sun goading to frenzied flame the glittering gems of the snow,
And a monster musk-ox bulking black against the blood-red gleam.
I think you would see berg-battling shores, and stammer and halt and stare,
With a sudden sense of the frozen void, serene and vast and still;
And the aching gleam and the hush of dream, and the track of a great white bear,
And the primal lust that surged in you as you sprang to make your kill.
I think you would hear the bull-moose call, and the glutted river roar;
And spy the hosts of the caribou shadow the shining plain;
And feel the pulse of the Silences, and stand elate once more
On the verge of the yawning vastitudes that call to you in vain.
For I think you are one with the stars and the sun, and the wind and the wave and the dew;
And the peaks untrod that yearn to God, and the valleys undefiled;
Men soar with wings, and they bridle kings, but what is it all to you,
Wise in the ways of the wilderness, and strong with the strength of the Wild?
You have spent your life, you have waged your strife where never we play a part;
You have held the throne of the Great Unknown, you have ruled a kingdom vast:
. . . . .
But to-night there's a strange, new trail for you, and you go, O weary heart!
To the place and rest of the Great Unguessed . . . at last, Tom Thorne, at last.
poem by Robert William Service
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Night
The ebb slips from the rock, the sunken
Tide-rocks lift streaming shoulders
Out of the slack, the slow west
Sombering its torch; a ship's light
Shows faintly, far out,
Over the weight of the prone ocean
On the low cloud.
Over the dark mountain, over the dark pinewood,
Down the long dark valley along the shrunken river,
Returns the splendor without rays, the shining of shadow,
Peace-bringer, the matrix of all shining and quieter of shining.
Where the shore widens on the bay she opens dark wings
And the ocean accepts her glory. O soul worshipful of her
You like the ocean have grave depths where she dwells always,
And the film of waves above that takes the sun takes also
Her, with more love. The sun-lovers have a blond favorite,
A father of lights and noises, wars, weeping and laughter,
Hot labor, lust and delight and the other blemishes. Quietness
Flows from her deeper fountain; and he will die; and she is
immortal.
Far off from here the slender
Flocks of the mountain forest
Move among stems like towers
Of the old redwoods to the stream,
No twig crackling; dip shy
Wild muzzles into the mountain water
Among the dark ferns.
O passionately at peace you being secure will pardon
The blasphemies of glowworms, the lamp in my tower, the
fretfulness
Of cities, the cressets of the planets, the pride of the stars.
This August night in a rift of cloud Antares reddens,
The great one, the ancient torch, a lord among lost children,
The earth's orbit doubled would not girdle his greatness, one fire
Globed, out of grasp of the mind enormous; but to you O Night
What? Not a spark? What flicker of a spark in the faint far
glimmer
Of a lost fire dying in the desert, dim coals of a sand-pit the
Bedouins
Wandered from at dawn . . . Ah singing prayer to what gulfs
tempted
Suddenly are you more lost? To us the near-hand mountain
Be a measure of height, the tide-worn cliff at the sea-gate a
measure of continuance.
The tide, moving the night's
Vastness with lonely voices,
Turns, the deep dark-shining
Pacific leans on the land,
Feeling his cold strength
To the outmost margins: you Night will resume
The stars in your time.
O passionately at peace when will that tide draw shoreward?
Truly the spouting fountains of light, Antares, Arcturus,
Tire of their flow, they sing one song but they think silence.
The striding winter giant Orion shines, and dreams darkness.
And life, the flicker of men and moths and the wolf on the hill,
Though furious for continuance, passionately feeding, passionately
Remaking itself upon its mates, remembers deep inward
The calm mother, the quietness of the womb and the egg,
The primal and the latter silences: dear Night it is memory
Prophesies, prophecy that remembers, the charm of the dark.
And I and my people, we are willing to love the four-score years
Heartily; but as a sailor loves the sea, when the helm is for harbor.
Have men's minds changed,
Or the rock hidden in the deep of the waters of the soul
Broken the surface? A few centuries
Gone by, was none dared not to people
The darkness beyond the stars with harps and habitations.
But now, dear is the truth. Life is grown sweeter and lonelier,
And death is no evil.
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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The Great Grey Plain
Out West, where the stars are brightest,
Where the scorching north wind blows,
And the bones of the dead gleam whitest,
And the sun on a desert glows --
Yet within the selfish kingdom
Where man starves man for gain,
Where white men tramp for existence --
Wide lies the Great Grey Plain.
No break in its awful horizon,
No blur in the dazzling haze,
Save where by the bordering timber
The fierce, white heat-waves blaze,
And out where the tank-heap rises
Or looms when the sunlights wane,
Till it seems like a distant mountain
Low down on the Great Grey Plain.
No sign of a stream or fountain,
No spring on its dry, hot breast,
No shade from the blazing noontide
Where a weary man might rest.
Whole years go by when the glowing
Sky never clouds for rain --
Only the shrubs of the desert
Grow on the Great Grey Plain.
From the camp, while the rich man's dreaming,
Come the `traveller' and his mate,
In the ghastly dawnlight seeming
Like a swagman's ghost out late;
And the horseman blurs in the distance,
While still the stars remain,
A low, faint dust-cloud haunting
His track on the Great Grey Plain.
And all day long from before them
The mirage smokes away --
That daylight ghost of an ocean
Creeps close behind all day
With an evil, snake-like motion,
As the waves of a madman's brain:
'Tis a phantom NOT like water
Out there on the Great Grey Plain.
There's a run on the Western limit
Where a man lives like a beast,
And a shanty in the mulga
That stretches to the East;
And the hopeless men who carry
Their swags and tramp in pain --
The footmen must not tarry
Out there on the Great Grey Plain.
Out West, where the stars are brightest,
Where the scorching north wind blows,
And the bones of the dead seem whitest,
And the sun on a desert glows --
Out back in the hungry distance
That brave hearts dare in vain --
Where beggars tramp for existence --
There lies the Great Grey Plain.
'Tis a desert not more barren
Than the Great Grey Plain of years,
Where a fierce fire burns the hearts of men --
Dries up the fount of tears:
Where the victims of a greed insane
Are crushed in a hell-born strife --
Where the souls of a race are murdered
On the Great Grey Plain of Life!
poem by Henry Lawson
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Psalm 136
God's wonders of creation, providence, redemption of Israel, and salvation of his people.
Give thanks to God the sovereign Lord;
His mercies still endure;
And be the King of kings adored;
His truth is ever sure.
What wonders hath his wisdom done!
How mighty is his hand!
Heav'n, earth, and sea, he framed alone;
How wide is his command
The sun supplies the day with light;
How bright his counsels shine!
The moon and stars adorn the night;
His works are all divine.
[He struck the sons of Egypt dead;
How dreadful is his rod!
And thence with joy his people led;
How gracious is our God!
He cleft the swelling sea in two;
His arm is great in might;
And gave the tribes a passage through;
His power and grace unite.
But Pharaoh's army there he drowned;
How glorious are his ways!
And brought his saints through desert ground;
Eternal be his praise!
Great monarchs fell beneath his hand;
Victorious is his sword;
While Isr'el took the promised land;
And faithful is his word.]
He saw the nations dead in sin;
He felt his pity move:
How sad the state the world was in!
How boundless was his love!
He sent to save us from our woe;
His goodness never fails;
From death, and hell, and every foe;
And still his grace prevails.
Give thanks to God the heav'nly King;
His mercies still endure:
Let the whole earth his praises sing;
His truth is ever sure.
poem by Isaac Watts
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Genesis BK III
(ll. 135-143) The day departed, hasting over the dwellings of
earth. And after the gleaming light the Lord, our maker, thrust
on the first of evenings. Murky gloom pressed hard upon the
heels of day; God called it night. Our Lord sundered them, one
from the other; and ever since they follow out the will of God to
do it on the earth.
(ll. 143-153) Then came a second day, light after darkness. And
the Lord of life ordained a pleasant firmament amid the waters.
Our Lord sundered the seas and established the heavens. By His
word the King, Almighty God, raised them above the earth. The
waters were divided under the heavens by His holy might; the
waters were sundered from the waters, under the firmament.
(ll. 154-168) Then came hasting over the earth the third fair
morning. Not yet were the wide ways and spacious tracts useful
unto God, but the land lay covered by the deep. The Lord of
angels, by His word, commanded that the waters come together,
which now beneath the heavens hold their course and place
ordained. Then suddenly, wide-stretching under heaven, lay the
sea, as God gave bidding. The great deep was sundered from the
land. The Warden of life, the Lord of hosts, beheld the dry
ground far outspread. And the King of glory called it earth.
For the ocean-billows and the wide-flung sea He set a lawful path
and lettered them....
((LACUNA -- two to three leaves missing))
Christmas Creek
Phantom streams were in the distance - mocking lights of lake and pool -
Ghosts of trees of soft green lustre - groves of shadows deep and cool!
Yea, some devil ran before them changing skies of brass to blue,
Setting bloom where curse is planted, where a grass-blade never grew.
Six there were, and high above them glared a wild and wizened sun,
Ninety leagues from where the waters of the singing valleys run.
There before them, there behind them, was the great, stark, stubborn plain,
Where the dry winds hiss for ever, and the blind earth moans for rain!
Ringed about by tracks of furnace, ninety leagues from stream and tree,
Six there were, with wasted faces, working northwards to the sea!
Ah, the bitter, hopeless desert! Here these broken human wrecks
Trod the wilds where sand of fire is with the spiteful spinifex,
Toiled through spheres that no bird knows of, where with fiery emphasis
Hell hath stamped its awful mint-mark deep on every thing that is!
Toiled and thirsted, strove and suffered! ~This~ was where December's breath
As a wind of smiting flame is on weird, haggard wastes of death!
This was where a withered moan is, and the gleam of weak, wan star,
And a thunder full of menace sends its mighty voices far!
This was where black execrations, from some dark tribunal hurled,
Set the brand of curse on all things in the morning of the world!
One man yielded - then another - then a lad of nineteen years
Reeled and fell, with English rivers singing softly in his ears,
English grasses started round him - then the grace of Sussex lea
Came and touched him with the beauty of a green land by the sea!
Old-world faces thronged about him - old-world voices spoke to him;
But his speech was like a whisper, and his eyes were very dim.
In a dream of golden evening, beaming on a quiet strand,
Lay the stranger till a bright One came and took him by the hand.
England vanished; died the voices; but he heard a holier tone,
And an angel that we know not led him to the lands unknown!
Six there were, but three were taken! Three were left to struggle still;
But against the red horizon flamed a horn of brindled hill!
But beyond the northern skyline, past a wall of steep austere,
Lay the land of light and coolness in an April-coloured year!
'Courage, brothers!' cried the leader. 'On the slope of yonder peak
There are tracts of herb and shadow, and the channels of the creek!'
So they made one last great effort - haled their beasts through brake and briar,
Set their feet on spurs of furnace, grappled spikes and crags of fire,
Fought the stubborn mountain forces, smote down naked, natural powers,
Till they gazed from thrones of Morning on a sphere of streams and flowers.
Out behind them was the desert, glaring like a sea of brass!
Here before them were the valleys, fair with moonlight-coloured grass!
At their backs were haggard waste-lands, bickering in a wicked blaze!
In their faces beamed the waters, marching down melodious ways!
Touching was the cool, soft lustre over laps of lawn and lea;
And majestic was the great road Morning made across the sea.
On the sacred day of Christmas, after seven months of grief,
Rested three of six who started, on a bank of moss and leaf -
Rested by a running river, in a hushed, a holy week;
And they named the stream that saved them - named it fitly - 'Christmas Creek'.
poem by Henry Kendall
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My Own Shall Come to Me
I come, I come! ye have called me long;
I come o'er the mountains, with light and song.
Ye may trace my step o'er the waking earth
By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,
By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
By the green leaves opening as I pass.
I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut-flowers
By thousands have burst from the forest bowers,
And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes
Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains;
But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,
To speak of the ruin or the tomb!
I have looked o'er the hills of the stormy North,
And the larch has hung all his tassels forth;
The fisher is out on the sunny sea,
And the reindeer bounds o'er the pastures free,
And the pine has a fringe of softer green,
And the moss looks bright, where my step has been.
I have sent through the wood-paths a glowing sigh,
And called out each voice of the deep blue sky,
From the night-bird's lay through the starry time,
In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime,
To the swan's wild note by the Iceland lakes,
When the dark fir-branch into verdure breaks.
From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain;
They are sweeping on to the silvery main,
They are flashing down from the mountain brows,
They are flinging spray o'er the forest boughs,
They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves,
And the earth resounds with the joy of waves.
poem by John Burroughs
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Voice Of Spring
I come, I come! ye have called me long;
I come o'er the mountains, with light and song.
Ye may trace my step o'er the waking earth
By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,
By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
By the green leaves opening as I pass.
I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut-flowers
By thousands have burst from the forest bowers,
And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes
Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains;
But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,
To speak of the ruin or the tomb!
I have looked o'er the hills of the stormy North,
And the larch has hung all his tassels forth;
The fisher is out on the sunny sea,
And the reindeer bounds o'er the pastures free,
And the pine has a fringe of softer green,
And the moss looks bright, where my step has been.
I have sent through the wood-paths a glowing sigh,
And called out each voice of the deep blue sky,
From the night-bird's lay through the starry time,
In the groves of the soft Hesperian clime,
To the swan's wild note by the Iceland lakes,
When the dark fir-branch into verdure breaks.
From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain;
They are sweeping on to the silvery main,
They are flashing down from the mountain brows,
They are flinging spray o'er the forest boughs,
They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves,
And the earth resounds with the joy of waves.
poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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Heath from the Highlands
Here, where the great hills fall away
To bays of silver sea,
I hold within my hand to-day
A wild thing, strange to me.
Behind me is the deep green dell
Where lives familiar light;
The leaves and flowers I know so well
Are gleaming in my sight.
And yonder is the mountain glen,
Where sings in trees unstirred
By breath of breeze or axe of men
The shining satin-bird.
The old weird cry of plover comes
Across the marshy ways,
And here the hermit hornet hums,
And here the wild bee strays.
No novel life or light I see,
On hill, in dale beneath:
All things around are known to me
Except this bit of heath.
This touching growth hath made me dream -
It sends my soul afar
To where the Scottish mountains gleam
Against the Northern star.
It droops - this plant - like one who grieves;
But, while my fancy glows,
There is that glory on its leaves
Which never robed the rose.
For near its wind-blown native spot
Were born, by crags uphurled,
The ringing songs of Walter Scott
That shook the whole wide world.
There haply by the sounding streams,
And where the fountains break,
He saw the darling of his dreams,
The Lady of the Lake.
And on the peaks where never leaf
Of lowland beauty grew,
Perhaps he met Clan Alpine's chief,
The rugged Roderick Dhu.
Not far, perchance, this heather throve
(Above fair banks of ferns),
From that green place of stream and grove
That knew the voice of Burns.
Against the radiant river ways
Still waves the noble wood,
Where in the old majestic days
The Scottish poet stood.
Perhaps my heather used to beam
In robes of morning frost,
By dells which saw that lovely dream -
The Mary that he lost.
I hope, indeed, the singer knew
The little spot of land
On which the mountain beauty grew
That withers in my hand.
A Highland sky my vision fills;
I feel the great, strong North -
The hard grey weather of the hills
That brings men-children forth.
The peaks of Scotland, where the din
And flame of thunders go,
Seem near me, with the masculine,
Hale sons of wind and snow.
So potent is this heather here,
That under skies of blue,
I seem to breathe the atmosphere
That William Wallace knew.
And under windy mountain wall,
Where breaks the torrent loose,
I fancy I can hear the call
Of grand old Robert Bruce.
poem by Henry Kendall
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