Classic Poem

The wind—the world-old rhapsodist—goes by,
And the great pines in changeless vesture gloomed,
And all the towering elm-trees thatched and plumed
With green, take up, one after one, the cry,
And as their choral voices swell and die,
Catching the infinite note from tree to tree,
Others far off in long antistrophe
With swaying arms and surging tops, reply.
So to men's souls, at sacred intervals,
Out of the dust of life takes wing and calls
A spirit that we know not, nor can trace,
And heart to heart makes answer with strange thrill,
It passes, and a moment face to face
We dream ourselves immortal, and are still.