The Song of the Stone Wall

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Song of the Stone Wall, by Helen Keller
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Title: The Song of the Stone Wall
Author: Helen Keller
Release Date: April 20, 2004 [EBook #12093]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
? START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SONG OF THE STONE WALL ***
Produced by Jamie Taylor in memory of Helen Keller.
THE SONG OF?THE STONE WALL
BY?HELEN KELLER
1910?Copyright, 1909, 1910.?Published October, 1910.
DEDICATION
When I began “The Song of the Stone Wall,” Dr. Edward Everett Hale was still among us, and it was my intention to dedicate the poem to him if it should be deemed worthy of publication. I fancied that he would like it; for he loved the old walls and the traditions that cling about them.
As I tried to image the men who had built the walls long ago, it seemed to me that Dr. Hale was the living embodiment of whatever was heroic in the founders of New England. He was a great American. He was also a great Puritan. Was not the zeal of his ancestors upon his lips, and their courage in his heart? Had they not bequeathed to him their torch-like faith, their patient fervor of toil and their creed of equality?
But his bright spirit had inherited no trace of their harshness and gloom. The windows of his soul opened to the sunlight of a joyous faith. His optimism and genial humor inspired gladness and good sense in others. With an old story he prepared their minds to receive new ideas, and with a parable he opened their hearts to generous feelings. All men loved him because he loved them. They knew that his heart was in their happiness, and that his humanity embraced their sorrows. In him the weak found a friend, the unprotected, a champion. Though a herald and proclaimer of peace, he could fight stubbornly and passionately on the side of justice. His was a lovable, uplifting greatness which drew all men near and ever nearer to God and to each other. Like his ancestors, he dreamed of a land of freedom founded on the love of God and the brotherhood of man, a land where each man shall achieve his share of happiness and learn the work of manhood—to rule himself and “lend a hand.”
Thoughts like these were often in my mind as the poem grew and took form. It is fitting, therefore, that I should dedicate it to him, and in so doing I give expression to the love and reverence which I have felt for him ever since he called me his little cousin, more than twenty years ago.
HELEN KELLER
Wrentham, Massachusetts,?January, 1910.
THE SONG OF?THE STONE WALL
Come walk with me, and I will tell?What I have read in this scroll of stone;?I will spell out this writing on hill and meadow.?It is a chronicle wrought by praying workmen,?The forefathers of our nation--?Leagues upon leagues of sealed history awaiting an interpreter. This is New England's tapestry of stone?Alive with memories that throb and quiver?At the core of the ages?As the prophecies of old at the heart of God’s Word.
The walls have many things to tell me,?And the days are long. I come and listen:?My hand is upon the stones, and the tale I fain would hear?Is of the men who built the walls,?And of the God who made the stones and the workers.
With searching feet I walk beside the wall;?I plunge and stumble over the fallen stones;?I follow the windings of the wall?Over the heaving hill, down by the meadow-brook,?Beyond the scented fields, by the marsh where rushes grow.?On I trudge through pine woods fragrant and cool?And emerge amid clustered pools and by rolling acres of rye. The wall is builded of field-stones great and small,?Tumbled about by frost and storm,?Shaped and polished by ice and rain and sun;?Some flattened, grooved, and chiseled?By the inscrutable sculpture of the weather;?Some with clefts and rough edges harsh to the touch.?Gracious Time has glorified the wall?And covered the historian stones with a mantle of green.?Sunbeams flit and waver in the rifts,?Vanish and reappear, linger and sleep,?Conquer with radiance the obdurate angles,?Filter between the naked rents and wind-bleached jags.
I understand the triumph and the truth?Wrought into these walls of rugged stone.?They are a miracle of patient hands,?They are a victory of suffering, a paean of pain;?All pangs of death, all cries of birth,?Are in the mute, moss-covered stones;?They are eloquent to my hands.?O beautiful, blind stones, inarticulate and dumb!?In the deep gloom of their hearts there is a gleam?Of the primeval sun which looked upon them?When they were begotten.?So in the heart