Through the chinks of the wall and thrill the heart
And quicken it with passionate response!
The walls sing the song of wild bird, the hoof-beat of deer,
The murmur of pine and cedar, the ripple of many streams;
Crows are calling from the Druidical wood;
The morning mist still haunts the meadows
Like the ghosts of the wall builders.

As I listen, methinks I hear the bitter plaint
Of the passing of a haughty race,
The wronged, friendly, childlike, peaceable tribes,
The swarthy archers of the wilderness,
The red men to whom Nature opened all her secrets,
Who knew the haunts of bird and fish,
The hidden virtue of herb and root;
All the travail of man and beast they knew--
Birth and death, heat and cold,
Hunger and thirst, love and hate;
For these are the unchanging things writ in the imperishable book of
life
That man suckled at the breast of woman must know.

In the dim sanctuary of the pines
The winds murmur their mysteries through dusky aisles--
Secrets of earth’s renewal and the endless cycle of life.
Living things are afoot among the grasses;
The closed fingers of the ferns unfold,
New bees explore new flowers, and the brook
Pours virgin waters from the rushing founts of May.
In the old walls there are sinister voices--