The Song of the Stone Wall | Page 4

knew no wavering or shadow of turning.?They have withstood sun and northern blast,?They have outlasted the unceasing strife?Of forces leagued to tear them down.?Under the stars and the clouds, under the summer sun,?Beaten by rain and wind, covered with tender vines,?The walls stand symbols of a granite race,?The measure and translation of olden times.
In the rough epic of their life, their toil, their creeds,?Their psalms, their prayers, what stirring tales?Of days that were their past had they to tell?Their children to keep the new faith burning??Tales of grandsires in the fatherland?Whose faith was seven times tried in fiery furnaces,--?Of Rowland Taylor who kissed the stake,?And stood with hands folded and eyes steadfastly turned?To the sky, and smiled upon the flames;?Of Latimer, and of Cranmer who for cowardice heroically atoned-- Who thrust his right hand into the fire?Because it had broken plight with his heart?And written against the voice of his conviction.?With such memories they exalted and cherished?The heroism of their tried souls,?And ours are wrung with doubt and self-distrust!
I am kneeling on the odorous earth;?The sweet, shy feet of Spring come tripping o’er the land,?Winter is fled to the hills, leaving snowy wreaths?On apple-tree, meadow, and marsh.?The walls are astir; little waves of blue?Run through my fingers murmuring:?“We follow the winds and the snow!”?Their heart is a cup of gold.?Soft whispers of showers and flowers?Are mingled in the spring song of the walls.?Hark to the songs that go singing like the wind?Through the chinks of the wall and thrill the heart?And quicken it with passionate response!?The walls sing the song of wild bird, the hoof-beat of deer, The murmur of pine and cedar, the ripple of many streams;?Crows are calling from the Druidical wood;?The morning mist still haunts the meadows?Like the ghosts of the wall builders.
As I listen, methinks I hear the bitter plaint?Of the passing of a haughty race,?The wronged, friendly, childlike, peaceable tribes,?The swarthy archers of the wilderness,?The red men to whom Nature opened all her secrets,?Who knew the haunts of bird and fish,?The hidden virtue of herb and root;?All the travail of man and beast they knew--?Birth and death, heat and cold,?Hunger and thirst, love and hate;?For these are the unchanging things writ in the imperishable book of life?That man suckled at the breast of woman must know.
In the dim sanctuary of the pines?The winds murmur their mysteries through dusky aisles--?Secrets of earth’s renewal and the endless cycle of life.?Living things are afoot among the grasses;?The closed fingers of the ferns unfold,?New bees explore new flowers, and the brook?Pours virgin waters from the rushing founts of May.?In the old walls there are sinister voices--?The groans of women charged with witchcraft.?I see a lone, gray, haggard woman standing at bay,?Helpless against her grim, sin-darkened judges.?Terror blanches her lips and makes her confess?Bonds with demons that her heart knows not.?Satan sits by the judgment-seat and laughs.?The gray walls, broken, weatherworn oracles,?Sing that she was once a girl of love and laughter,?Then a fair mother with lullabies on her lips,?Caresses in her eyes, who spent her days?In weaving warmth to keep her brood against the winter cold. And in her tongue was the law of kindness;?For her God was the Lord Jehovah.?Enemies uprose and swore her accused,?Laid at her door the writhing forms of little children,?And she could but answer: “The Evil One?Torments them in my shape.”?She stood amazed before the tribunal of her church?And heard the gate of God’s house closed against her.?Oh, shuddering silence of the throng,?And fearful the words spoken from the judgment-seat!?She raised her white head and clasped her wrinkled hands:?“Pity me, Lord, pity my anguish!?Nor, since Thou art a just and terrible God,?Forget to visit thy wrath upon these people;?For they have sworn away the life of Thy servant?Who hath lived long in the land keeping Thy commandments.?I am old, Lord, and betrayed;?By neighbor and kin am I betrayed;?A Judas kiss hath marked me for a witch.?Possessed of a devil? Here be a legion of devils!?Smite them, O God, yea, utterly destroy them that persecute the innocent.” Before this mother in Israel the judges cowered;?But still they suffered her to die.?Through the tragic, guilty walls I hear the sighs?Of desolate women and penitent, remorseful men.
Sing of happier themes, O many-voiced epic,?Sing how the ages, like thrifty husbandmen, winnow the creeds of men,?And leave only faith and love and truth.?Sing of the Puritan’s nobler nature,?Fathomless as the forests he felled,?Irresistible as the winds that blow.?His trenchant conviction was but the somber bulwark?Which guarded his pure ideal.?Resolute by the communion board he stood,?And after solemn prayer solemnly cancelled?And abolished the divine right of kings?And declared the holy rights of man.?Prophet and toiler, yearning for other worlds, yet wise in this; Scornful of earthly empire and brooding on death,?Yet wrestling life out of the wilderness?And laying stone on