Echo the long-drawn sighs
  Of the mounting wind in the pines;
  And the sobs of the mounting waves that rise
    In the dark of the troubled deep
  To break on the beach in fiery lines. 
    Echo the far-off roll of thunder,
        Rumbling loud
    And ever louder, under
    The blue-black curtain of cloud,
    Where the lightning serpents gleam. 
      Echo the moaning
    Of the forest in its sleep
    Like a giant groaning
  In the torment of a dream.

    Now an interval of quiet
    For a moment holds the air
    In the breathless hush
    Of a silent prayer.

    Then the sudden rush
    Of the rain, and the riot
    Of the shrieking, tearing gale
    Breaks loose in the night,
    With a fusillade of hail! 
    Hear the forest fight,
  With its tossing arms that crack and clash
    In the thunder’s cannonade,
    While the lightning’s forked flash
  Brings the old hero-trees to the ground with a crash! 
  Hear the breakers’ deepening roar,
    Driven like a herd of cattle
    In the wild stampede of battle,
  Trampling, trampling, trampling, to overwhelm the shore!

      Is it the end of all? 
      Will the land crumble and fall? 
      Nay, for a voice replies
      Out of the hidden skies,
  “Thus far, O sea, shalt thou go,
  So long, O wind, shalt thou blow: 
  Return to your bounds and cease,
  And let the earth have peace!”

    O Music, lead the way—­
      The stormy night is past,
  Lift up our hearts to greet the day,
      And the joy of things that last.

    The dissonance and pain
      That mortals must endure,
  Are changed in thine immortal strain
      To something great and pure.

    True love will conquer strife,
      And strength from conflict flows,
  For discord is the thorn of life
      And harmony the rose.

May, 1916.

THE BELLS OF MALINES

August 17, 1914

  The gabled roofs of old Malines
  Are russet red and gray and green,
  And o’er them in the sunset hour
  Looms, dark and huge, St. Rombold’s tower. 
  High in that rugged nest concealed,
  The sweetest bells that ever pealed,
  The deepest bells that ever rung,
  The lightest bells that ever sung,
  Are waiting for the master’s hand
  To fling their music o’er the land.

  And shall they ring to-night, Malines? 
  In nineteen hundred and fourteen,
  The frightful year, the year of woe,
  When fire and blood and rapine flow
  Across the land from lost Liege,
  Storm-driven by the German rage? 
  The other carillons have ceased: 
  Fallen is Hasselt, fallen Diest,
  From Ghent and Bruges no voices come,
  Antwerp is silent, Brussels dumb!