The vane leans broken, the gutters hang rust-taken;
Mixed with the silence is the monotone
Of falling water by the mute mill flowing.
Have hearts forgotten how the children played
Along the creek? How cattle, homeward lowing,
Long lingered at the ford to drink and wade?
Gnarled apple trees let fall the dwindling fruit,
Which transient rabbits munch undisconcerted;
From neighboring woods the black bear comes to loot
The berries. Hop-vines hide the crumbling shed,
And time the insatiable by change is fed.
21
ERNEST G. MOLL
Professor Ernest G. Moll was born in Australia, the son of a rancher, on August 25, 1900. At the age of 13 he entered Concordia College at Adelaide, where he completed the course preliminary to the study of theology, but was requested by the director of his college not to continue his efforts in that field. After spending some months in training with the Australian Militia, he returned to his father's ranch. In 1920 he came to America and entered Lawrence College, Wisconsin. He received his bachelor of arts degree there in 1922 and his master of arts degree the next year at Harvard. That summer he went to Europe as a hand on a cattle ship. From 1923 to 1925 he held the position of instructor in English in Colorado College at Colorado Springs. The next two years he spent at collecting and importing into America 3,000 live Australian birds. He has been on the faculty of the University of Oregon since 1928, as assistant professor and associate professor of English. He is the author of Sedge Fire, 1927; Native Moments and Other Poems, 1931; Campus Sonnets, 1934; The Appreciation of Poetry, 1933; and Blue Interval, poems on Crater Lake, 1935.
To An Entering College Freshman
From Campus Sonnets, 1934
In quiet valleys; deep in sheltering woods
