TO THE EARTH.
Reading edition
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BY JAMES ALDRICH.
———
How are thy charms, O maskéd Earth! displayed,
In hill and valley, rock and waterfall,
Flower-studded field, deep glen, and open glade,
With the blue sky in beauty bent o’er all.
Seekest with outward shows to win the heart?
Only their glare our grosser vision dulls;
The inward eye beholds thee, as thou art,
Great hearse of man, vast catacomb of skulls!
Thy moving forces, which we call the living,
Bustling and battling through their little day,
Are nought to thy great prostrate army, giving
Their flesh to worms, their bones to slow decay.
And what is that which life thy children call?
A little round of idle hopes and fears,
A dream prefig’ring being, this is all,
Made up of hope and smiles, despair and tears.
The countless millions all around us lying
With ghastly upturned faces, free from strife,
The unreturning dead, yet the undying,
How laugh they at the nothing we call life!
Enough! enough! if after our brief fretting,
Freed from thy fetters, we may rise in bliss
To some bright world where Life’s sun knows no setting
Where we may meet the lost and loved of this.