Classic Poem

These are great songs that hold the heart
Wakeful among the silences.

The song of mighty hills,
Smitten of winds, veiled in the streaming mist,
Or standing, purple-clear, against the sky;
A song archaic, which the watchful stars
Have heard and answered since creation's dawn.
And often in the night, the woodland winds
And distant streams re-echo it.

The song of winds
Wakened from dreams among the buttercups,
Beating with rising wings the cloud-filled sky,
And through the surging spaces of the sea
Leaping in thunder.

Songs of the sea
That murmur round the caverns and the crags,
Sob in the rising tide, and prattle low
Ebbing among the pebbles of the beach.
They cry strange things, and call along the strand
Till men leave home and love to follow them.
And some return, with vision-haunted eyes;
But some the sea drags down, and over them —
Dim, spectral, wavering — the hollow surf
Intones forever.

The song of men
In thronging cities, strong, unsatisfied,
Strident, with many discords breaking through.
It overrides the song of hills and sea
With quicker movement and insistent theme
Marring their melodies; yet through it all
A mighty underlying motive sweeps
By which the very discords may be merged
In harmony.

And heard afar, like some vast symphony,
The city's song is even as the sea!