Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/387

 For that glad season which will pass to-day

With light and music like a psalm away,

The gathered nations with a grand accord,

In sight of Thy high heaven, thank Thee, Lord!

All praise is Thine—all love that we can give

Is also Thine, in whose large grace we live,

In whom we find the One long-suffering Friend,

Whose immemorial mercy has no end.

, mountain-wind, thy strong, superior song—

Thy haughty alpine anthem, over tracts

Whose passes and whose swift, rock-straitened streams

Catch mighty life and voice from thee, and make

A lordly harmony on sea-chafed heights.

Sing, mountain-wind, and take thine ancient tone,

The grand, austere, imperial utterance.

Which drives my soul before it back to days

In one dark hour of which, when Storm rode high

Past broken hills, and when the polar gale

Roared round the Otway with the bitter breath

That speaks for ever of the White South Land

Alone with God and Silence in the cold,

I heard the touching tale of Basil Moss,

A story shining with a woman's love!

And who that knows that love can ever doubt

How dear, divine, sublime a thing it is;

For while the tale of Basil Moss was one

Not blackened with those stark, satanic sins

Which call for superhuman sacrifice,

Still, from the records of the world's sad life,

This great, sweet, gladdening fact at length we've learned,

There's not a depth to which a man can fall,

No slough of crime in which such one ean lie

Stoned with the scorn and curses of his kind,

But that some tender woman can be found

To love and shield him still.