ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS (50)

    I

    THY hills are kneeling in the tardy¹ spring, And wait, in supplication's gentleness, The certain resurrection that shall bring A robe of verdure for their nakedness. Thy perfumed valleys where the twilights dwell, Thy fields within the sunlight's living coil

    Now promise, while the veins² of nature swell³, Eternal recompense to human toil⁴. And when the sunset's final shades depart The aspiration⁵ to completed birth Is sweet and silent； as the soft tears start, We know how wanton and how little worth Are all the passions of our bleeding heart That vex⁶ the awful patience of the earth.

    II

    Thine are the large winds and the splendid sun Glutting⁷ the spread of heaven to the floor Of waters rhythmic⁸ from far shore to shore, And thine the stars, revealing one by one, Thine the grave, lucent night's oblivion, The tawny⁹ moon that waits below the skies,—— Strange as the dawn that smote¹⁰ their blistered¹¹ eyes Who watched from Calvary when the Deed was done. And thine the good brown earth that bares its breast To thy benign¹² October, thine the trees Lusty with fruitage in the late year's rest；

    And thine the men whos@ blood has glorified¹³ Thy name with Liberty Is divine decrees- The men who loved thy soil and fought and died. III

    Toward thine Eastern window when the morn Steals through the silver mesh¹⁴ of silent stars, I come unlaurelled from the strenuous¹⁵ wars Where men have fought and wept and died Forlorn.

    But here, across the early fields of corn, The living silence dwelleth, and the gray Sweet earth-mist, while afar the lisp of spray Breathes from the ocean like a Triton's horn. Open thy lattice, for the gage¹⁶ is won For which this earth has journeyed though the dust Of shattered systems, cold about the sun； And proved by sin, by mighty¹⁷ lives impearled, A voice cries through the sunrise： "Time is Just！"

    And falls like dew God's pity on the world