Not by those hoary Indian hills,
Not by this gracious Midland sea
Whose floor to-night sweet moonshine fills,
Should our graves be.
Some sage, to whom the world was dead,
And men were specks, and life a play;
Who made the roots of trees his bed,
And once a day
With staff and gourd his way did bend
To villages and homes of man,
For food to keep him till he end
His mortal span,—
And the pure goal of being reach;
Gray-headed, wrinkled, clad in white;
Without companion, without speech,
By day and night
Pondering God's mysteries untold,
And tranquil as the glacier-snows,—
He by those Indian mountains old
Might well repose.
Some gray crusading knight austere,
Who bore Saint Louis company,
And came home hurt to death, and here
Landed to die;
Some youthful troubadour, whose tongue
Filled Europe once with his love-pain,
Who here outworn had sunk, and sung
His dying strain;
Some girl, who here from castle-bower,
With furtive step and cheek of flame,
'Twixt myrtle-hedges all in flower
By moonlight came
