I moved mid the crowds in the cities of fame, I pondered their pleasures and pride, A stranger, alone, wherever I came, I heard but the surge of the tide.
Though knowledge increased with the sight of the new, Though grandeur gave thrills of delight, Though marvelling oft at the things, man can do, Yet weariness came with the night.
And I longed for the sound of the voice of a friend, I longed for my home far away, When, behold, I met one at a thoroughfare’s end, At the close of a wearisome day!
The clasp of his hand, with the love of his heart, The warm and the genuine grip, Brought greater delight than the sight of all art, And all wonderful things of the trip.
Beside a winding country road A house unique one sees, It used to be the Lord’s abode, Now that of groceries.
A church with graveyard in its rear, Where many saints do sleep, O, could they rise, I greatly fear, It would be for to weep,
Beholding what the years have wrought In changes of the place, How man for gain has rudely sought Its mem’ries to efface.
For here, where generations met To worship God in truth, Now Mammon has his motto set, With Vandal hand uncouth.
Where once did sound the Holy Word, By men of earnest heart, Now bargainings are daily heard,-- The language of the mart.
Where once the altar stood, now stands A stove around which sit The gossiper’s unholy bands And swear and lie and spit.
And could each much neglected mound Yield up its dust to life again, The words of Christ would then resound: “My Father’s house ye made a den.”
But thus our sacrilegious age Is blinded by the god of gold, Soon finished is its sacred page, Our days of worship well-nigh told.
A path of trembling gold, from where I stand, Across the limpid lake, to darkling woods, Upon the far off strand, Where evening’s glory broods, Until it changes into rose, A livid pink, suffusing all, The mighty water’s deep repose; And as the fiery ball Drops into clouds on the horizon’s rim, The hue, most delicate, takes on a crimson glow, In which the shadows of the shore grow dim, And slowly all things into darkness flow; Anon the moon appears and clothes the scene And floating mist-veil into languid sheen.
A sea of fire in which a sky Of lavender and blue and red Together with the clouds of changing dye Reflected are--divinely wed; And we, who rove about, are led By an illusion, such as seldom seen: A strange receding of the deep, As if we sat above a waterfall, O’er which our skiff full soon must leap Into immensity, bright, hyaline, Where brooding spirits beck and call.