Page:Songs, Legends, and Ballads.djvu/297

And as it touched him, lo! the awful rest
Of death was broken, and the youth uprose!

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Nine years passed over since on that fair shore
The wanderers knelt,—but wanderers they no more.
With hopeful hearts they bore the promise-pain
Of early labor, and soon bending grain
And herds and homesteads and a teeming soil
A thousand-fold repaid their patient toil.

Nine times the sun's high glory glared above,
As if his might set naught on human love,
But yearned to scorn and scorch the things that grew
On man's poor home, till all the forest's hue
Of blessed green was burned to dusty brown;
And still the ruthless rays rained fiercely down,
Till insects, reptiles, shrivelled as they lay,
And piteous cracks, like lips, in parching clay
Sent silent pleadings skyward,—as if she,