Part 16 (1/2)
You're white as a ghost--Why, here's father from town!
And who are those men, daughter, helping him down?
Run! open the door! There's a whirr in my head, And the tune's getting louder--”The boys aren't dead!”
Cleora! That voice--it is Robert!--O, Lord!
I have leaned on Thy promise, and trusted Thy word, And out of the midst of great darkness and night Thy mercy has led me again to the light!
IN HOC SIGNO VINCES!
(UNDER THIS SIGN THOU SHALT CONQUER.)
Beneath the solemn stars that light The dread infinitudes of night, Mid wintry solitudes that lie Where lonely Hecla's toweling pyre Reddens an awful s.p.a.ce of sky With Thor's eternal altar fire!
Worn with the fever of unrest, And spent with years of eager quest, Beneath the vaulted heaven they stood, Pale, haggard eyed, of garb uncouth, The seekers of the Hidden Good, The searchers for Eternal Truth!
From fiery Afric's burning sands, From Asia's h.o.a.ry templed lands, From the pale borders of the North, From the far South--the fruitful West, O, long ago each journeyed forth, Led hither by one glorious quest!
And each, with pilgrim staff and shoon, Bore on his scrip a mystic rune, Some maxim of his chosen creed, By which, with swerveless rule and line, He shaped his life in word and deed To ends heroic and divine!
Around their dreary winter world The great ice-kraken dimly curled The white seas of the frozen zone; And like a mighty lifted s.h.i.+eld The hollow heavens forever shone On gleaming fiord and pathless field!
Behind them, in the nether deep, The central fires, that never sleep, Grappled and rose, and fell again; And with colossal shock and throe The shuddering mountain rent in twain Her garments of perpetual snow!
Then Aba Seyd, grave-eyed and grand, Stood forth with lifted brow and hand; Kingly of height, of mien sublime, Like glorious Saul among his peers, With matchless wisdom for all time Gleaned from the treasure house of years; His locks rose like an eagle's crest, His gray beard stormed on cheek and breast, His silvery voice sonorous rang, As when, exulting in the fray, Where lances hissed and trumpets sang, He held the Bedouin hordes at bay.
”Lo! Here we part: henceforth alone We journey to the goal unknown; But whatsoever paths we find, The ties of fellows.h.i.+p shall bind Our constant souls; and soon or late-- We laboring still in harmony-- The grand results for which we wait Shall crown the mighty years to be!
Now scoffed at, baffled, and beset, We grope in twilight darkness yet, We who would found the age of gold, Based on the universal good, And forge the links that yet shall hold The world in common Brotherhood!
”O, comrades of the Mystic Quest!
Who seek the Highest and the Best!
Where'er the goal for which we strive-- Whate'er the knowledge we may win-- This truth supreme shall live and thrive, 'Tis love that makes the whole world kin!
The love sublime and purified, That puts all dross of self aside To live for others--to uphold Before our own a brother's cause: This is the master power shall mould The n.o.bler customs, higher laws!
”Then shall all wars, all discords cease, And, rounded to perpetual peace, The bounteous years shall come and go Unvexed; and all humanity, Nursed to a loftier type, shall grow Like to that image undefiled, That fair reflex of Deity, Who, first, beneath the morning skies And glowing palms of paradise, A G.o.d-like man, awoke and smiled!”
* * * * Like some weird strain of music, spent In one full chord, the sweet voice ceased; A faint white glow smote up the east, Like wings uplifting--and a cry Of winds went forth, as if the night Beneath the brightening firmament Had voiced, in hollow prophecy, The affirmation: ”By and by!”
HOW KATIE SAVED THE TRAIN.
The floods were out. Far as the bound Of sight was one stupendous round Of flat and sluggish crawling water!
As, from a slowly drowning rise, She looked abroad with startled eyes, The engineer's intrepid daughter.
Far as her straining eyes could see, The seething, swoolen Tombigbee Outspread his turbulent yellow tide; His angry currents swirled and surged O'er leagues of fertile lands submerged, And ruined hamlets, far and wide.
Along a swell of higher ground, Still, like a gleaming serpent, wound The heavy graded iron trail; But, inch by inch, the overflow Dragged down the road bed, till the slow Back-water crept across the rail.
And where the ghostly trestle spanned A stretch of marshy bottom-land, The stealthy under current gnawed At sunken pile, and ma.s.sive pier, And the stout bridge hung airily where She sullen d.y.k.e lay deep and broad.
Above the hollow, droning sound Of waves that filled the watery round, She heard a distant shout and din-- The levees of the upper land Had crumbled like a wall of sand, And the wild floods were pouring in!
She saw the straining d.y.k.e give way-- The quaking trestle reel and sway.
Yet hold together, bravely, still!
She saw the rus.h.i.+ng waters drown The piers, while ever sucking down The undermined and treacherous ”fill!”