THE LAST CAMP-FIRE
Scar not earth’s breast that I may haveSomewhere above her heart a grave;Mine was a life whose swift desireBent ever less to dust than fire;Then through the swift, white path of flameSend back my soul to whence it came:From some great peak storm-challenging,My death-fire to the heavens fling;The rocks my altar, and aboveThe still eyes of the stars I love;No hymn, save as the midnight windComes whispering to seek his kind.Heap high the logs of spruce and pine,Balsam for spices and for wine;Brown cones, and knots a golden blurOf hoarded pitch more sweet than myrrh;Cedar to stream across the darkIts scented embers spark on spark;Long shaggy boughs of juniper,And silvery, odorous sheafs of fir;Spice wood to die in incense smokeAgainst the stubborn roots of oak—Red to the last for hate or love,As that red, stubborn heart above.Watch till the last pale ember dies,Till wan and low the dead pyre lies;Then let the thin, white ashes blowTo all earth’s winds, a finer snow;There is no wind of hers but IHave loved it as it whistled by;No leaf whose life I would not share,No weed that is not someway fair:Hedge not my dust in one close urn,It is to these I would return—The wild, free winds, the things that knowNo master’s rule, no ordered row.To be, if nature will, at lengthPart of some great tree’s noble strength;Growth of the grass; to live anewIn many a wild flower’s richer hue;Find immortality indeedIn ripened heart of fruit and seed.Time grants not any man redressOf his broad law, forgetfulness:—I parley not with shaft and stone,Content that in the perfume blownFrom next year’s hillsides something sweet,And mine, shall make earth more complete.