Classic Poem

Silently here from the glen
The creek glides forth. At its marge,
The silt of a hundred floods,
Stretches the glistening bar
Of wave-worn pebbles, — the dull,
Glimmering granite and sard,
Agate blood-veined, and gray
Star-celled coral, — the spoil
From some far precipice rived
In the frozen North, and borne
Hither in icy arms
By the crawling glacier streams
Aeons agone. — It was here,
Light-hearted lads at our play,
We found thee, my comrade and I,
Thou ancient knife-blade of flint,
Slender and pointed and pale,
As the last sere leaf by the storm
Swept from the writhing bough
Of the willow lashing the wind.

Meet was the couch for thy rest,
O child of a vanished age!
Of a race that is withered away!
Meet was the spot; for thou too
Art the wreckage of time, and still
To the seeing eye and the heart
That broods o'er the past, dost reveal
The sum of a perished life.
Nations have blossomed and fallen,
Long generations have flowed
Through this hurrying world, and thrones
Bubbled and fled into air,
Since thou from the stubborn flint
Wert shaped by the swarthy hand,
Supple, sinewy, strong,
Of the cunning worker in stone.
In the shade there, hard by the spring,
He wrought thee, perchance, the while
Some perilous battle musing,
A savage and long-cherished feud
Fought out in the days of his prime;
Or he dreamed of the bark-roofed hut,
Desolate now, and the form,
Long since mouldered to dust,
Of his coppery, skin-clad mate.

Hither anon some youth,
Keen eyed, lithesome, alert,
For barter came, with a fish
From the flooded Slough, or the pelt
Of musquash or white-throated mink
Trapped in the lily-topped pools
Of the Burning Island; and soon
From the polished jasper and jade
Spear-blade and arrow-point keen,
Heads for the axe, and rough
Wedges chipped from the flint,
Chose thee to fit his young hand,
And joyed, lad-like, in his prize.
There, where the forests of oak
Yet purple the autumn hills,
He bore thee. In his firm grip
Oft wert thou clasped, as he stole
Quick-breathing, watchful, intense,
On the blood-dappled track of a bear
From his wintry den aroused
In the rocks, and fierce from the prick
Of the glancing spear. Thine edge
Stripped the tough bough of the ash
And fashioned his bow. It was thou,
Didst cut from the silvery birch
Her satin robe, and the bast
Of the linden, wherewith he might bind
The gift of his wooing. In all
Unregarded thou wroughtest his will,
The slave of his many desires.

Here in the bend of the hills
Where the bank widens, — a mead
Fringed with the jewel-weed now,
With the cardinal's flame aglow. —
Thou wert when midnight fires
Flashed on fierce eyes. By the wind
Borne o'er the shuddering groves,
Re-echoed the maniac yells,
And the death-chant loud of the foe
Captive and bound and doomed.
Thou, too, drankest delight
With the blood that followed thy stroke
From the quivering flesh, and the gashed,
Defiant face of the foe;
Till the long agony ceased,
And thou gluttedst thy rage in his heart.

Here on the sandy marge
From his nerveless hand at last
Thou fellest, when, spent with years,
Broken, outcast, alone,
He crept to the spreading pool
Once more to drink, and died.

Died: and thou only remain'st
To witness that life. All his hope,
All his despair and fears,
The vague, wild longing of youth,
The strength of manhood, the vain,
Bitter wisdom of age,
His dreams and his deeds and desires, —
Vanished: thou only art left,
Thou bit of insensate stone.

And we, of a later race,
Who found thee and joyed, and spent
Our little day of delight
On the banks of the self-same stream,
Roving his breezy woods
And the ferny hill-side, — we, too,
Pass as he passed. Lo, now
One already has ta'en

The darkling trail; and one
Walks by the brook-side alone,
And lingers, ere he, too, depart,
To fashion this song, as rude,
As rough-hewn as thou; yet, like thee,
A token of life that was lived,
Of life and of love and desire,
In days that return no more.