• Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; & we
• Whom trees that knew our 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 irrevocable[?] 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 upheaved forest-trees mossgrown today
• Whose roots are hillocks where the children play;
• Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke
• Those stars, that through his spray-crown leaflets watch the oak,
• When even his gnarled boughs shrink shall hold their way.

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