6. SONGS OF THE FIRST MAY-TIDE.
(v.)
The son of motion,
The son of radiance and airy spaces,
From his youth in the eddies of life,
He, whose heart was bleeding
With tenderness and with manly strength,
When in the night he stood musing
Over the town that has perished,
He heard this funeral chant:
O miserere, O miserere,
Woe worth the land that has perished. . .
Over the silenced homesteads
It sang in a graveyard-stillness:
O miserere, O miserere. . .
The weary, unventuresome and humble
Have withdrawn them from life. . .
Here in over-eloquent muteness
Is the desert of Europe with artless beauty. . .
The grass withers, that her bondsmen
May be bedded the softer
In days and in nights of hunger. . .
How rich here the waxing of pine-woods:
There is need of coffins for all the people. . .
Upon the pigmy acres
Is reared only the tillage
Of a time of faintness and death. . .
