Compassion of heaven,
Tears from God's eyes,
Falling so gently
Out of the skies.
The Great Mother
Where meet the streams from the earth's many fountains,
That part from each other with myriad aims—
The Danube that springs from its far-distant mountains,
The Tiber, the Seine, the Rhine and the Thames;
Far from each other, independent and free,
Yet do not all of them flow to the sea?
Loud do their cataracts fling out their thunder
Through the deep gorges that lead them along.
Hundreds of leagues divide them asunder;
Yet, see how resistless their dark waters throng.
In whirlpool and rapid, with agonized motion,
Until they find rest in the world's level ocean.
And from the world's frontiers came the world's races,
Diverse as their colors and languages run;
Life bade them stand with alien faces,
With wrongs to requite, till Death made them one
With the silence that broods on his passionless land,
By the call of his voice and the seal of his hand.
Repose now their ashes in earth's tender keeping—
Dust unto dust, as the autumn leaves fall;
Peace, peace at last to tired eyes sleeping,
To Saxon, and Teuton, to Latin and Gaul;
Back to the great Mother—thus it must be,
As their home-rivers flow to the sea.
In Memoriam
I