THE OLD CRY

O Mourner in the silence of the hills,
O Thing of ancient griefs, art thou a wolf?
I heard a cry that shook me—was it thine?

Low in the mystic purple of the west
The weird moon hangs, a tarnished silver slug:
Vast, vast the hollow empty night curves down,
Stabbed with the glass-like glinting of the stars,
And, save when that wild cry grows up anon,
No sound but this dull murmur of the hush—
The winter hush.

Hark! once again thy cry!

Thy strange, sharp, ice-like, tenuous complaint,
As though the spirit of this frozen waste
Pinched with the cruel frost yearned summerward!

I know thou art a wolf that criest so:
Though hidden in the shadow, I can see
Thy four feet huddled in the numbing frost,
Thy snout, breath-whitened, pointing to the sky:
Poor pariah of the plains, I know ’tis thou.

And yet—and yet—I heard a kinsman shout!
Down through the intricate centuries it came,
A far-blown cry! From old-world graves it grew,
Up through the tumbled walls of ancient realms,
Up through the lizard-haunted heaps of stone,
Up through the choking ashes of old fanes,
The pitiful debris where Grandeur dwelt,
Out of the old-world wilderness it grew—
The cry I know! And I have heard my Kin!