“Where are ye, mighty giants?
Ye come not riding by
Upon your fiery horses,
A-whistling merrily.
“Of other days my dreaming,
Of other days, ah me!
When sturdy hero-races
Lived wild and glad and free!
“The old sun shone, how brightly!
The old lark sang, what song!
O’er earth Desire and Gladness
Reigned happily and long
“But see! what are these ant-hills?—
These ants that creep and crawl?...
Bereft of man and nature,
My life is stripped of all!
“And I, an ancient orphan,
What do I here alone?
My friends have all departed,
My youth and glory gone.
“Oh, tear me, root and branches!
No longer let me be
A living head-stone, brooding
O’er the grave of liberty.”
[The Cemetery Nightingale]
In the hills’ embraces holden,
In a valley filled with glooms,
Lies a cemetery olden,
Strewn with countless mould’ring tombs.
Ancient graves o’erhung with mosses,
Crumbling stones, effaced and green,—
Venturesome is he who crosses,
Night or day, the lonely scene.
Blasted trees and willow streamers,
’Midst the terror round them spread,
Seem like awe-bound, silent dreamers
In this garden of the dead.