Classic Poem

The choral pines to the wild winds are singing,
A weird Æolian strain,
Aloft their green imperial branches swinging
In sunshine, dark and rain,
Through all the patient centuries outflinging
Their litanies of pain.

Stern atmospheres and lashing storms enfold them
And robes of ancient night;
The rock-sills of the solid planet hold them
And swing them to the light;
They whisper dreams — the dreams the mountains told them,
The great peaks tipped with white.

Dreams of the story of their own creation —
How from a burning mist
Love forged a bulwark in each fiery station
Howe'er His wisdom wist,
And flaming billows on each rock-foundation
Broke wild and seethed and hissed!

Then all the sons of God smote on the lyre
Some strain of praise to try;
The morning stars, a great celestial choir,
Together sang on high,
And lurid peaks that split the winds of fire
Bulged sheerly up the sky.

The pines had heard the mountains tell the story;
Long ere our feet had trod
The hillsides in their wealth of summer glory
Or pressed the velvet sod
The waves were beating on the bastions hoary
The whisper-dreams of God.

Dreams of a time ere yet the years were numbered,
Before the mountains were,
Long ere an eagle's nest the crags had cumbered
With nested eaglet's care,
While every primal form of life yet slumbered
In sea and fire and air.

But burning mist was all, and all was motion
Within a sphered dome,
The earth an eddy in a flaming ocean,
A spume of fire and foam,
A prophecy of Love's unplumbed devotion
When earth should be our home.

A whirling chaos, rapture-thrilled,
Love's tabernacle stood;
His chariot was the hurricane,
His highway was the flood.

His hand of power shook tempests forth
In whirlwinds fierce and warm;
The lightnings fled before His face,
His vesture was the storm.

One heart, one life, one urge sublime,
One all-creative Soul
Impassioned all the universe
And glorified the whole.

The storm was life-expression. Canst thou wonder
Knowing the might of Love,
With no repressive power to hold it under,
No stern restraint above,
That Love should wildly burn and rage and thunder,
And like a tempest move?

Love is the source of life from everlasting
To everlasting years;
When seas dashed hissing on the rocks and blasting
The solid granite piers,
'Twas life chaotic huge rock-masses casting
Into its own salt tears.

Here all was life ere life to forms was broken,
Here God Himself seemed young;
Eternal wisdom had not found a token,
Love had not yet a tongue;
The earth was still a word of life unspoken,
A song of love unsung.

Here thought and feeling, soaring and ascending,
The sunshine glowing warm,
The stately cedar on the hill-top bending,
Each lovely floweret form,
With all the harmonies of time were blending
In that primeval storm.

But life, the elemental forms essaying,
Climbed ever, ever higher
On roads of victory, anew displaying
Some basic, fixed desire,
While each time-spirit on life's forms was laying
Its tribulum of fire.

Within each part there brooded the great Spirit
Awaiting that glad hour
When, bursting from its bonds, earth should inherit
The glorious wisdom-flower,
And Love should lift the race to Christly merit,
And pain awake to power.

Love blossomed by the brooks in valleys vernal,
In lilies smiling fair;
He hid within the acorn's tiny kernel,
And lordly oaks were there;
In human flesh, and lo, the life eternal
'Tis ours with Love to share!

In the stars that gem the blue
Of the night,
In the storm and in the dew,
There is light;
In the clouds that split with thunder,
In the soul athrill with wonder,
Over all and through and under,
There is Love and Light.

In the moon-gleam on the sea
There is power,
In the suns and nebulae,
In the flower;
In the soul of pure desire
Present always to inspire
Like a throne of pillared fire,
There is Love and Power.

And thus the footfall of forgotten marches
Comes faintly down the breeze,
The rustling leaf-songs of the firs and larches
Blend their joy-minstrelsies;
They sing the runes of ancient forest arches,
The chansons of old seas.

With odours of the orient and the sighing
Of sylvan lutes, the song
Of birds, the beat of angel pinions flying,
The surges breaking strong
On moaning beaches, breezes lingering, dying
Amid the fir-tree throng,

They tell how Love, in mighty tribulation
Long ere our lives began,
Nailed Nature to the cross, a true oblation,
In some divine, dim plan,
And raised again in thrilling exaltation,
This blue-arched home for man.

Such was the song that drifted down the ocean
And stirred the ancient pine;
Such was the urge and promise of devotion
To Love's supreme design
That moved in billows of intense emotion,
Primordial, divine.

And all that lurid pageant of existence
Was force unsubjugate,
A life potential dreaming of persistence,
The dream that we call fate,
And whirling, reeling down ethereal distance
In flaming robes and state!