Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/597

Rh

HANKSGIVING 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, 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.

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 evermore to lie,

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.

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
 * 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.


 * 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.
 * And hard the toil is on these scanty plains.

Howbeit I thank the ever-giving ones.
 * Who dwell in high Olympus mar the stars.

They have not walked in ever-burning suns,
 * Nor has the hard earth hurt their feet with scars.

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.