TO REST AT LAST by CINCINNATUS HEINE MILLER

What wonder that I swore a prophet's oath
Of after days. . . . I push'd the boughs apart,
I stood, look'd forth, and then look'd back, all loath
To leave my shadow'd wood. I gathered heart
From very fearfulness; with sudden start
I plunged in the arena; stood a wild
Uncertain thing, all artless, in all art. . . .
The brave approved, the fair lean'd fair and smiled, --
True lions touch with velvet-touch a timid child.

But now enough of men. Enough, brief day
Of tinsel'd life. The court, the castle gate
That open'd wide along the pleasant way,
The gracious converse of the kingly great
Had made another glad and well elate
With all. A word of thanks; but I am grown
Aweary. . . . I am not of this estate;
The poor, the plain brave border-men alone
Were my first love, and these I will not now disown.

I know a grassy slope above the sea,
The utmost limit of the westmost land.
In savage, gnarl'd, and antique majesty
The great trees belt about the place, and stand
In guard, with mailed limb and lifted hand,
Against the cold approaching civic pride.
The foamy brooklets seaward leap; the bland
Still air is fresh with touch of wood and tide,
And peace, eternal peace, possesses, wild and wide.

Here I return, here I abide and and rest;
Some flocks and herds shall feed along the stream;
Some corn and climbing vines shall make us blest
With bread and luscious fruit. . . . The sunny dream
Or wampum men in moccasins that seem
To come and go in silence, girt in shell,
Before a sun-clad cabin-door, I deem
The harbinger of peace. Hope weaves her spell
Again about the wearied heart, and all is well.

Here I shall sit in sunlit life's decline
Beneath my vine and somber verdant tree.
Some tawny maids in other tongues than mine
Shall minister. Some memories shall be
Before me. I shall sit and I shall see,
That last vast day that dawn shall reinspire,
The sun fall down upon the farther sea,
Fall wearied down to rest, and so retire,
A splendid sinking isle of far-off fading fire.

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