PLYMOUTH ROCK.

Archaic sphinx, but speak to me Of things when this old world was new, When Chaos was baptized in fire, Such secrets must be known to you. Would that the magic wand were mine To rend the silence! Yours the heart More wise than babbling multitudes; Of what strange scenes were you a part? An offspring of some glacial slope, You may have been a thing of grace Some ancient caryatid poised, To hold Earth’s architrave in place. Mayhap you were a thunderbolt By Vulcan forged for Thor, red hot; A miracle was never made, So this may all be true, or not. A child of some wild catapult Who toyed with Sisyphus, and then, Broke loose, went tumbling down to earth, To habitat with tribes of men. A missile from Orion’s belt, Some dullard chiseled out of clay; Perchance some treasure, Glancus owned, Before his Furies ran away. The throne of Neptune washed ashore From some old chamber of the sea; A Dryad-altar, pagan-blest, An aerolite, lo! such it be! Made sacred by the pounding waves, To mark the aeons on the slopes Where time looks out to heavens afar, And God again renews man’s hopes And rallies him to dare and die, For Liberty, through all the years, To dyke and drain and build anew, By labour, gladness, dreams and tears. ’Tis here I lift my humble prayers, And thanks for Life’s sweet mysteries, For joy of song within my soul, And chant its solemn histories; If kings shall reign, O make us kings, On seas and on the land, Kings of the One Great Church where all Shall bow at Love’s command. Thou prophet, orb, and corner-stone, As things immortal are as one, Clad in the garb of wonder-fire, Of gloom and the Olympian sun, I bring a spray of arbutus, From underneath the snow and sleet, The angels fashioned like a star, And drop at your anointed feet.