| |
| THANKSGIVING to the gods! | |
| Shaken and shivering in the autumn rains, | |
| With clay feet clinging to the weary sods, | |
| I wait below the clouds, amid the plains, | |
| As though I stood in some remote, strange clime, | 5 |
| Waiting to kneel upon the tomb of time. | |
| |
| The harvest swaths are gathered in the garth, | |
| The aftermath is floating in the fields, | |
| The house-carl bides beside the roaring hearth, | |
| And clustered cattle batten in the shields. | 10 |
| Thank ye the gods, O dwellers in the land, | |
| For home and hearth and ever-giving hand. | |
| Stretch hands to pray and feed and sleep and die, | |
| And then be gathered to your kindred gods, | |
| Low in dank barrows ever more to lie, | 15 |
| So long as autumn over wood-ways plods, | |
| Forgetting the green earth as ye forgot | |
| Its glory in the day when it was born | |
| To you, on some fair tide in grove and grot, | |
| As though new-made upon a glimmering morn. | 20 |
| |
| And it shall so be meted unto you | |
| As ye did mete when all things were to do. | |
| The wild rains cling around me in the night | |
| Closer than woman in the sunny days, | |
| And through these shaken veins a weird delight | 25 |
| Of loneliness and storm and sodden ways | |
| And desolation, made most populous, | |
| Builds up the roof-trees of the gloomy house | |
| Of grief to hide and help my lonely path, | |
| A sateless seeker for the aftermath. | 30 |
| |
| Thanksgiving to the gods! | |
| No hidden grapes are leaning to the sods, | |
| No purple apple glances through green leaves, | |
| Nor any fruit or flower is in the rains, | |
| Nor any corn to garner in long sheaves, | 35 |
| And hard the toil is on these scanty plains. | |
| Howbeit I thank the ever-giving ones, | |
| Who dwell in high Olympus near the stars, | |
| They have not walked in ever-burning suns, | |
| Nor has the hard earth hurt their feet with scars. | 40 |
| Never the soft rains beat them, nor the snow, | |
| Nor the sharp winds that we marsh-stalkers know. | |
| In the sad halls of heaven they sleep the sleep, | |
| Yea, and no morn breaks through their slumber deep. | |
| |
| These things they cast me forth at eventide to bear | 45 |
| With curving sickle over sod and sand; | |
| And no wild tempest drowns me to despair, | |
| No terrors fear me in a barren land. | |
| Perchance somewhere, across the hollow hill, | |
| Or in the thickets in these dreary meads, | 50 |
| Great grapes, uncut, are on the limp vine still, | |
| And waving corn still wears its summer weeds, | |
| Unseen, ungathered in the earlier tide, | |
| When larger summer o’er the earth did glide. | |
| Who knows? Belike from this same sterile path | 55 |
| My harvest hand, heaped with an aftermath, | |
| Shall cast the garner forth before their feet, | |
| Shapely and shaven clean and very sweet. | |
| |
| Thanksgiving to the gods! | |
| Wet with the falling rain, | 60 |
| My face and sides are beaten as with rods, | |
| And soft and sodden is the endless plain— | |
| How long—howlong do I endure in vain? | |
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