On Ponus Ridge

I heard the voice of our mother planet murmur today as the south wind blew
Over the old Connecticut granite, up from the Sound and the rainy blue.
"What is your comment, wandering brother," said Ponus Ridge to the striding rain,
"Not on the new word, Love one another, but the harder text, Ye shall rise again?

"Hast thou found out truth at the core of being, in thy long wandering to and fro?
Dost thou know what lurks beyond foreseeing in the endless rhythm of ebb and flow?"
"Much have I heard," said Rain, "of the babel and heated haste of the lordling Man,
Telling the wind his gorgeous fable; but who shall hurry or check the plan?

'"I take small heed of the tales he mutters," the glittering copious rain ran on;
"My music drowns the words he utters; I make my bed where his town-lights shone.
I hear the drone of his church and college, humming like hives from roof to floor
With direful chant and delirious knowledge, as I pass foot-free by their open door.

"I have heard the vaunts of his daring dreamers, the things foretold by his sons of might,
And watched him flaunt like the boreal streamers that glow and fade in the arctic night.
I have seen the flare of his pageants kindled, the pride of Carthage, the pomp of Tyre;
And even as I fell they sank and dwindled, beaten down like a farm-boy's fire.

"The earth is my house, the spring my portal; I serve without envy, debate or fear.
Though I pass in mist, am I less immortal than the greatening germ or the glowing sphere?
I come from the sea and I go to the sea; ten thousand times have I risen again
From the welter and lift of eternity, to solace thy waiting not in vain.

"My strength is loosed for thy brooks and rivers, by lake and orchard, by wood and field;
My silver voice with a sob delivers the message for telling a goodly yield.
I have quickened the joy in thy swelling breast, I have sluiced the ache of thy breeding fire;
I have perished in transport and died with zest, to fill the measure of thy desire.

"The seeds of life are of my sowing, the virile impulse, the fertile gush,
The gist and start of all things growing; but thine is the warmth and the pregnant hush.
The stir of joy is of my giving; a hint of perfection far and fine
I speak as I pass to all things living; but the patient wisdom and lore are thine."

Then the mother granite, grey, eternal, scarred, to the careless eye uncouth,
Spoke in a language pure and vernal, solemn as beauty and sweet as truth.
In the voice of the Ridge in her April season, through the babble of streams and the calls of birds,
Under the rune I caught the reason, out of the murmur I made the words.

"Nay, my comrade, I too must pass; though my fleeting hours be ages long,
I abide in the end no more than the grass, than a puff of smoke or a strain of song.
If I give myself to the moment's rapture of lilt and leafage, shall I repine
That the joy I bestow escapes recapture, spent for the beauty of branch and vine?

"Strong, unhurrying, unbelated, part of the slow sidereal urge,
Patient and sure at heart I waited for life to throb and its forms emerge.
While cosmic aeons dawned and darkened, and monstrous drift and blast went by,
In my slow gestation I lay and harkened for soul to question and sense to cry.

"I am the ardent and ageless mother of all things human, all things divine.
The ravaging snows may whirl and smother, the large cold moon of November shine,
But safe in my soil the germs are sleeping that shall awake when the time is come,
To prove the beneficence of my keeping, and don the glory of fragrant bloom.

"See my young willows in sunlight lifting their silver lances against the blue,
And here where the matted leaves are rifting, the hoods of the blood-root breaking through.
Soon in the sheltered sun-warmed places, out of my ancient enchanted mould,
Frail spring-beauties will lift their faces, and addertongues put forth their gold.

"Hark to my minstrel, beyond the boulders down in the swamp, — on time, no fear!—
In his sable coat with scarlet shoulders, with his husky flute that is good to hear.
And hark again, in the long Aprilian dusk on the marsh to my piper's cry.
To-night but one, to-morrow a million will lift my heart on their chorus high.

"Now Sirius low in the west is leaning, Arcturus lifts on the eastern rim, —
The poise, the order, the mighty meaning, creating beauty from brim to brim.
Under the dust of seed and planet, the river music, the starry light,
Am I in the midst, immortal granite, merging my strength with the soul of night.

"At morn I shall see from my stream-bed narrow the wild geese flapping with honk and plash,
To steady and drive their Indian arrow north-by-east for the Allegash.
And then the high clear note of gladness, the rallying call of the golden-wing,
The solace of grief, the shame of sadness, the goodly far-sent summons of spring.

"Here all day long I shall lie and ponder the teeming life whereon I brood,
While the buds unfold, the low clouds wander, and all things flow to rhythm and mood.
And seeing all form but the trace of motion, all beauty the vestige of joy made plain,
Shall I stint my care and my devotion, to vex me with counting the once or again?

"I take no measure, I keep no tally, of the budding spray and the leafing bough,
Yet not a blossom in all the valley but is the pride of' my patience now.
In the hardwood groves where the sun lies mellow, the purple hepaticas take the air.
I help the catkins to break and yellow; the greening spring-runs are in my care.

"I loosen the sheaths of the bladed rushes, I lift the sap in the spiral cells,
Till the first soft tinge through the woodland flushes, and the crimson bud of the maple swells.
I nurse them to beauty hour by hour. And there by the road in its grove of pine,
The little bare school with its dreams of power and joy of knowledge, —that, too, is mine!"