| |
| MY brother, man, shapes him a plan | |
| And builds him a house in a day, | |
| But I have toiled through a million years | |
| For a home to last alway. | |
| I have flooded the sands and washed them down, | 5 |
| I have cut through gneiss and granite. | |
| No toiler of earth has wrought as I, | |
| Since God’s first breath began it. | |
| High mountain-buttes I have chiselled, to shade | |
| My wanderings to the sea. | 10 |
| With the wind’s aid, and the cloud’s aid, | |
| Unweary and mighty and unafraid, | |
| I have bodied eternity. | |
| |
| My brother, man, builds for a span: | |
| His life is a moment’s breath. | 15 |
| But I have hewn for a million years, | |
| Nor a moment dreamt of death. | |
| By moons and stars I have measured my task— | |
| And some from the skies have perished: | |
| But ever I cut and flashed and foamed, | 20 |
| As ever my aim I cherished: | |
| My aim to quarry the heart of earth, | |
| Till, in the rock’s red rise, | |
| Its age and birth, through an awful girth | |
| Of strata, should show the wonder-worth | 25 |
| Of patience to all eyes. | |
| |
| My brother, man, builds as he can, | |
| And beauty he adds for his joy, | |
| But all the hues of sublimity | |
| My pinnacled walls employ. | 30 |
| Slow shadows iris them all day long, | |
| And silvery veils, soul-stilling, | |
| The moon drops down their precipices, | |
| Soft with a spectral thrilling. | |
| For all immutable dreams that sway | 35 |
| With beauty the earth and air, | |
| Are ever at play, by night and day, | |
| My house of eternity to array | |
| In visions ever fair. | |
| |
