I come today and the lights are fled,
And the trail of the mold and rust
Has saddened the hall where the feast was spread,
And love has vanished and youth is dead
At the Sign of the Heart of Dust.
THE PASSING RACE.
I.
Silent as ever, stoic as of old,
The scattered nomads of that dusky race
Whose story shall forever be untold,
Sit mid the ruins of their dwelling place
And watch the white man's empire grow apace.
Passive as one who knows his earthly doom,
And only waits with calm but hopeless face
The while the seasons go with blight and bloom,
So live they day by day beside their nation's tomb.
II.
In the deep woods and by the rolling streams
They made their home, and knew no other clime;
They lived their lives and dreamed barbaric dreams,
Nor heard the menace of relentless Time
As on his thunderous legions swept sublime
Bearing the torch of progress through the night,
Till lo! the primal wastes were all a-chime
With traffic's strange new music, and the might
Of busy hordes that wrought to spread the new-born light.