• Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; and ye
• Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know
• And still stand silent:—is it all a show,—
• A wisp that laughs upon the wall?—decree
• Of some inexorable supremacy
• Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise
• From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes,
• Sphinx-faced with unabashèd augury?

• Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke
• 10 The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day
• Whose roots are hillocks where the children play;
• Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke
• Those stars, that through his spray-crown watch the oak
• When even his gnarled boughs shrink, shall hold their way.

         D. G. Rossetti