The great Earth said to the poet,
'What are your paltry wrongs,
That still you must worship your sorrows,
And fashion them into songs?
'You see your fellows go downward,
You watch the decay of the leaf;
But yours is not the secret,
Or yours would not be the grief.
'I, too, have many sorrows,
But I let their voices be heard
In the roar of the winds and oceans
When my great strong bosom is stirred.
'But still in the rush of the whirlwind,
In the sway and surge of the sea,
There is not in all their music
One touch of pity for me.
'The stern, swift years stride onward,
As a battle column will range,
And ever in front their outposts,
With their miracles of change.
'The rivers widen their channels,
The seas have their grasp on the land;
I watch the beginnings of planets,
I know and I understand.
'Men pass as the shadows on mountains,
They come to me for their rest;
I lay them into my bosom,
As an infant is laid to the breast.
'I lull them into a silence
Till nothing can be so sweet;
They slumber, and are forgotten
In the echoes of other feet.
'For race follows race, and they vanish,
And I have no sound that grieves;
What tree would blossom and flourish
If it thought of its last year's leaves?
'I am struck with the lightnings of cannon,
And rent with the earthquake of wars,
I yearn and look upward for pity,
Which can only be had of the stars.
'I hear the poets wailing,
But my ear is deaf to their moan,
They dimly guess at my meaning,
But their sorrow is all their own.
'I have a purpose within me,
As a body has the soul,
But I care not to utter its message
When I understand the whole.
'You watch your fellows go downwards,
You see the decay of the leaf,
But yours is not the secret,
Or yours would not be the grief.'