  Across the harbor's tangled yards We watch the flaring sunset fail; Then the forever questing stars File down along the vanished trail, To no discovered country, where They will forgather when the hands Of the strong Fates shall take away Their burdens and unloose their bands. Mounts to the skyline sheer and wan, Where many a weary dream puts forth To strike the trail where they are gone. The sleepless guide to that outland Is the great Mother of us all, Whose molded dust and dew we are With the blown flowers by the wall. Girt with the twilight she is grave, The strong companion, wise and free; She leads beyond the dales of time, The earldom of the calling sea— And gleaming breakers on the bar— To the white kingdom of her lord, The nameless Word, whose breath we are. And all the world is but a scheme Of busy children in the street, A play they follow and forget On summer evenings, pale with heat. The dusty courtyard flags and walls Are like a prison gate of stone, To every spirit for whose breath The long sweet hill-winds once have blown. I see the ancient Mother stand, With the old courage of her smile, The patience of her sunbrown hand. They heed her not, until there comes A breath of sleep upon their eyes, A drift of dust upon their face; Then in the closing dusk they rise, And turn them to the empty doors; But she within whose hands alone The days are gathered up as fruit, Doth habit not in brick and stone. Along the woodside and the wheat, Is her abiding, deep withdrawn; And there, the footing of her feet. There is no common fame of her Upon the corners, yet some word Of her most secret heritage Her lovers from her lips have heard. Her daisies sprang where Chaucer went; Her darkling nightingales with spring Possessed the soul of Keats for song; And Shelley heard her skylark sing; Wordsworth beheld her daffodils; And he became too great for haste, Who watched the warm green Cumner hills. She gave the apples of her eyes For the delight of him who knew, With all the wisdom of a child, "A bank whereon the wild thyme grew." Still the old secret shifts, and waits The last interpreter; it fills The autumn song no ear hath heard Upon the dreaming Ardise hills. When waking winds of dawn go by; It fills her rivers like a voice, And leads her wanderers till they die. She knows the morning ways whereon The windflowers and the wind confer; Surely there is not any fear Upon the farthest trail with her! And yet, what ails the fir-dark slopes, That all night long the whippoorwills Cry their insatiable cry Across the sleeping Ardise hills? Blown leaf, nor song, nor friend can stray Beyond the bourne and bring one word Back the irremeable way? The noise is hushed within the street; The summer twilight gathers down; The elms are still; the moonlit spires Track their long shadows through the town. With looming willows and gray dusk The open hillward road is pale, And the great stars are white and few Above the lonely Ardise trail. We are as children going home Along the marshes where the wind Sleeps in the cradle of the foam.
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