Page:Poems by Frances Fuller Victor.djvu/75

 Fled over burning plains; in deserts fainted;

Wearied for months at sea—yet ever painted

Thee as the shining Mecca, that to gain

Invalidated pain,

Cured the sick soul—made nugatory evil

Of man or devil.

Alas, and well-a-day! we know

What idle dreams were these that fooled men so.

On yonder hillside sleep in nameless graves,

To which they went untended, the poor slaves

Of fruitless toil; the victims of a fever

Called homesickness—no remedy found ever;

Or slain by vices that grow rankly where

Men madly do and dare,

In alternations of high hope and deep abysses

Of recklessnesses.

Painfully, and by violence,

Even as heaven is taken, thou wert dragged whence

Nature had hidden thee—whose face is worn

With anxious furrows, and her bosom torn

In the hard strife—and ever yet there lingers

Upon these hills work for the effacing fingers

Of time, the healer, who makes all things seem

A half forgotten dream;

Who smooths deep furrows and lone graves together,

By touch of wind and weather.

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