We were long since a family, a people,

The legends say; an old kind-hearted king

Was our foster father, and our life a fable.

Nature in wrath broke through the grassy ring

Where all our gathered treasures lay in sleep—

Many a rich and many a childish thing.

She filled with hoofs and horns the quiet keep.

Her herds beat down the turf and nosed the shrine

In bestial wonder, bull and adder and ape,

Lion and fox, all dressed by fancy fine

In human flesh and armed with arrows and spears;

But on the brow of each a secret sign

That haughtily put aside the sorrowful years

Or struck them down in stationary rage;

Yet they had tears that were not like our tears,

And new, all new, for Nature knows no age.

Fatherless, sonless, homeless haunters, they

Had never known the vow and the pilgrimage,

Poured from one fount into the faithless day.

We are their sons, but long ago we heard

Our fathers or our fathers’ fathers say

As in a dream the half-remembered word

That rounded again the ring where sleeping lay

Our treasures, still unrusted and unmarred.