Wallace FergusonThere at Geneva where Mt. Blanc floated aboveThe wine-hued lake like a cloud, when a breeze was blownOut of an empty sky of blue, and the roaring RhoneHurried under the bridge through chasms of rock;And the music along the cafés was part of the splendorOf dancing water under a torrent of light;And the purer part of the genius of Jean RousseauWas the silent music of all we saw or heard—There at Geneva, I say, was the rapture lessBecause I could not link myself with the I of yore,When twenty years before I wandered about Spoon River?Nor remember what I was nor what I felt?We live in the hour all free of the hours gone by.Therefore, O soul, if you lose yourself in death,And wake in some Geneva by some Mt. Blanc,What do you care if you know not yourself as the youWho lived and loved in a little corner of earthKnown as Spoon River ages and ages vanished?
There at Geneva where Mt. Blanc floated aboveThe wine-hued lake like a cloud, when a breeze was blownOut of an empty sky of blue, and the roaring RhoneHurried under the bridge through chasms of rock;And the music along the cafés was part of the splendorOf dancing water under a torrent of light;And the purer part of the genius of Jean RousseauWas the silent music of all we saw or heard—There at Geneva, I say, was the rapture lessBecause I could not link myself with the I of yore,When twenty years before I wandered about Spoon River?Nor remember what I was nor what I felt?We live in the hour all free of the hours gone by.Therefore, O soul, if you lose yourself in death,And wake in some Geneva by some Mt. Blanc,What do you care if you know not yourself as the youWho lived and loved in a little corner of earthKnown as Spoon River ages and ages vanished?