In the first soft winds of spring, while snow yet lay on the ground—
Forth from the city into the great woods wandering,
Into the great silent white woods where they waited in their beauty and
majesty
For man their companion to come:
There, in vision, out of the wreck of cities and civilizations,
Slowly out of the ruins of the past
Out of the litter and muck of a decaying world,
Lo! even so
I saw a new life arise.
O sound of waters, jubilant, pouring, pouring—O hidden song in the
hollows!
Secret of the Earth, swelling, sobbing to divulge itself!
Slowly, building, lifting itself up atom by atom,
Gathering itself round a new center—or rather round the worldold
center once more revealed—
I saw a new life, a new society, arise.
Man I saw arising once more to dwell with Nature;
(The old old story—the prodigal son returning, so loved,
The long estrangement, the long entanglement in vain things)—
The child returning to its home—companion of the winter woods once
more—
Companion of the stars and waters—hearing their words at first-hand
(more than all science ever taught)—
The near contact, the dear dear mother so close—the twilight sky
and the young tree-tops against it;
The few needs, the exhilarated radiant life—the food and population
question giving no more trouble;
No hurry more, no striving one to over-ride the other:
… man the companion of Nature.
Civilization behind him now—the wonderful stretch of the past;
Continents, empires, religions, wars, migrations—all gathered up in him;
The immense knowledge, the vast winged powers—to use or not to use—…
And as he fell asleep at length it seemed there came a sound of hushed huge trampling underneath his window, and that when he rose to listen, his big friend from the steamer led him forth into the darkness, that those shapes of Cloud and Wind he now so often saw, companioned them across the heights of the night toward some place in the distant mountains where light and flowers were, and all his dream of years most exquisitely fulfilled….
He slept. And through his sleep there dropped the words of that old tribesman from the wilderness: "They come in the spring… and are very swift and roaring. They are older, older than the stones. They cannot die… they are of the mountains, and you must hide."
But the dream-consciousness knows no hiding; and though memory failed to report with detail in the morning, O'Malley woke refreshed and blessed, knowing that companionship awaited him, and that once he found the courage to escape completely, the Simple Life of Earth would claim him in full consciousness.
Stahl with his little modern "Intellect" was no longer there to hinder and prevent.
XXVII
"Far, very far, steer by my star,
Leaving the loud world's hurry and clamor,
In the mid-sea waits you, maybe,
The Isles of Glamour, where Beauty reigns.
From coasts of commerce and myriad-marted
Towns of traffic by wide seas parted,
Past shoals unmapped and by reefs uncharted,
The single-hearted my isle attains.
"Each soul may find faith to her mind,
Seek you the peace of the groves Elysian,
Or the ivy twine and the wands of vine,
The Dionysian, Orphic rite?
To share the joy of the Maenad's leaping
In frenzied train thro' the dusk glen sweeping,
The dew-drench'd dance and the star-watch'd sleeping,
Or temple keeping in vestal white?
"Ye who regret suns that have set,
Lo, each god of the ages golden,
Here is enshrined, ageless and kind,
Unbeholden the dark years through.
Their faithful oracles yet bestowing,
By laurels whisper and clear streams flowing,
Or the leafy stir of the Gods' own going,
In oak trees blowing, may answer you!"