POETRY.
ON THE WETTERHORN.
(AvousT 16rw, 1902.) As grass upon the hillside, in the morning growing green, By noon is mown and withered, and the next day is not seen, Even so the strong man passeth, and the young man is laid low,
And the life of those that live becomes a weeping and a woe.
Oh, fairer were the hills that day than ever poet rhymed, And the gates of heaven were opened to the eyes of them that climbed ; And beneath them like a dream-world the shadowy valleys lay, From the blue lakes at their feet to the blue hills far away.
They noted not the falling of the last low sands of life; They numbered not the moments as men foreknowing strife ; The sunlight was their sunlight, the world was yet for them, Till the snowfall like a cataract came down, that none could stem.
Oh, sorrow of the living ! oh, silence of the dead ! By the sleeping and the weeping be reverent our tread ! We lift our eyes in secret to the silver heights, and know The majesty of death beneath the mantle of the snow.
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