Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AUTOCHTHON, by CHARLES GEORGE DOUGLAS ROBERTS



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AUTOCHTHON, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I am the spirit astir
Last Line: The foreknowledge veiled in our face.
Subject(s): Nature


I AM the spirit astir
To swell the grain,
When fruitful suns confer
With laboring rain;
I am the life that thrills
In branch and bloom;
I am the patience of abiding hills,
The promise masked in doom.

When the sombre lands are wrung,
And storms are out,
And giant woods give tongue,
I am the shout;
And when the earth would sleep,
Wrapped in her snows,
I am the infinite gleam of eyes that keep
The post of her repose.

I am the hush of calm,
I am the speed,
The flood-tide's triumphing psalm,
The marsh-pool's heed;
I work in the rocking roar
Where cataracts fall;
I flash in the prismy fire that dances o'er
The dew's ephemeral ball.

I am the voice of wind
And wave and tree,
Of stern desires and blind,
Of strength to be;
I am the cry by night
At point of dawn,
The summoning bugle from the unseen height,
In cloud and doubt withdrawn.

I am the strife that shapes
The stature of man,
The pang no hero escapes,
The blessing, the ban;
I am the hammer that moulds
The iron of our race,
The omen of God in our blood that a people beholds,
The foreknowledge veiled in our face.





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