THE SEEKER IN THE MARSHES.
THANKSGIVING 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.
