University of Virginia Library

Why should I tire you with his dreams? And yet
To me they bring the saddest hours I know.
His pageant of migrations—swarming hosts
Of plant, beast, insect, man, in ceaseless march
Netting with footprints all the restless world
Age after age; his vision of the tombs—
Caves, barrows, rings and avenues of stone,
Ship-mounds and pyramids, by sea-washed shore,
Far inland, by the river, in the waste,
On snow-peaked mountain and on grassy plain,
On continent and isle, here one all lone,
There grouped in multitudes, till all the earth
Seemed one vast graveyard whence the Spirit of Man
Cried unto God for immortality;
His pageant of the altars—yearning arms
Stretched to the spirits of the kindly dead,
The blood-drenched idols and the shrieking fires,
The magic drums—why speak of these, of aught?
The song of Blossom and Babe was all he wrote
Of this stupendous Epic of the World.
Last spring he died, left me his grandchild there,
His fossils, books, and manuscripts. The last
I searched with eagerness, and found the song—
A single arrow-head in heaps of flakes,
Notes, observations, comments, chips of thought!
His heart was light unto the last: he felt
A joyous confidence that all was well.
No premonition saddened his decline;
And, dying, he believed in years of love
To lavish on his poem and his child.
The mighty Epic that had filled his brain,
Absorbed his very being forty years,
He took away with him. A larger life
May yield it larger utterance—who can tell?

Yes, give them to the gentleman, my dear!