Part 18 (1/2)

When, sick of all the sorrow and distress That flourished in the City like foul weeds, I sought blue rivers and green, opulent meads, And leagues of unregarded loneliness Whereon no foot of man had seemed to press, I did not know how great had been my needs, How wise the woodland's gospels and her creeds, How good her faith to one long comfortless.

But in the silence came a Voice to me; In every wind it murmured, and I knew It would not cease though far my heart might roam.

It called me in the sunrise and the dew, At noon and twilight, sadly, hungrily, The jealous City, whispering always -- ”Home!”

The Most-Sacred Mountain. [Eunice Tietjens]

s.p.a.ce, and the twelve clean winds of heaven, And this sharp exultation, like a cry, after the slow six thousand steps of climbing!

This is Tai Shan, the beautiful, the most holy.

Below my feet the foot-hills nestle, brown with flecks of green; and lower down the flat brown plain, the floor of earth, stretches away to blue infinity.

Beside me in this airy s.p.a.ce the temple roofs cut their slow curves against the sky, And one black bird circles above the void.

s.p.a.ce, and the twelve clean winds are here; And with them broods eternity -- a swift, white peace, a presence manifest.

The rhythm ceases here. Time has no place. This is the end that has no end.

Here, when Confucius came, a half a thousand years before the Nazarene, he stepped, with me, thus into timelessness.

The stone beside us waxes old, the carven stone that says: ”On this spot once Confucius stood and felt the smallness of the world below.”

The stone grows old: Eternity is not for stones.

But I shall go down from this airy place, this swift white peace, this stinging exultation.

And time will close about me, and my soul stir to the rhythm of the daily round.

Yet, having known, life will not press so close, and always I shall feel time ravel thin about me; For once I stood In the white windy presence of eternity.

The Chant of the Colorado. [Cale Young Rice]

(At the Grand Canyon)

My brother, man, shapes him a plan And builds him a house in a day, But I have toiled through a million years For a home to last alway.

I have flooded the sands and washed them down, I have cut through gneiss and granite.

No toiler of earth has wrought as I, Since G.o.d's first breath began it.

High mountain-b.u.t.tes I have chiselled, to shade My wanderings to the sea.

With the wind's aid, and the cloud's aid, Unweary and mighty and unafraid, I have bodied eternity.

My brother, man, builds for a span: His life is a moment's breath.

But I have hewn for a million years, Nor a moment dreamt of death.

By moons and stars I have measured my task -- And some from the skies have perished: But ever I cut and flashed and foamed, As ever my aim I cherished: My aim to quarry the heart of earth, Till, in the rock's red rise, Its age and birth, through an awful girth Of strata, should show the wonder-worth Of patience to all eyes.