The Rhone Glacier--Sunset

Like the uncounted years of God it rolls From out the sky. The light of heaven shines Upon its wrinkled brow, that seems a part Of that stupendous dome of boundless blue Where, like a pebble in the ocean depths, This little world is lost. The sparkling sun Plays gently in the deep green, icy clefts Like moonlight in the tender eyes of one Who looks to heaven to find her lover’s face. Silent, serene, implacable it stands-- A mighty symbol of the Force that moved Across the surface of the youthful earth And scored the continents with valleys deep, As children write upon the yielding sand. Back to the dawn of things its lineage runs-- Countless ages back to that bleak time When frightful monsters played upon the hills-- Always the same, yet moving slowly onward, In heaven its head, its feet upon the world. The Rhone that trickles from the glacier’s edge-- Makes valleys smile with grain and flower and fruit And turns the wheels that forge the tools of trade-- Is but the lash with which the giant plays And spins the tops that swarm with struggling men. “What is Man, that Thou art mindful of him?”-- This pleasure or this pain, this wealth or want, This tragic comedy we call our life!

Across the meadows as the evening falls A shepherd drives his sheep, and fondly bears Above the rocky stream the weakling lamb; The children hear the father’s kindly voice And run to greet and cheer his late return, While from his humble cottage gleams a light.

The sheep are nestled in their sheltering fold-- The door springs open to a welcome cry, And all at last are safe within the Home.

In cold and awful majesty it stands Against the darkening sky,--Force without warmth, Strength without passion. But at the touch Of homely human ways its terrors flee And Force is swallowed up in Life with Love.

JAMES McCOSH

1811-1894

Young to the end through sympathy with youth, Gray man of learning--champion of truth! Direct in rugged speech, alert in mind, He felt his kinship with all humankind, And never feared to trace development Of high from low--assured and full content That man paid homage to the Mind above, Uplifted by the “Royal Law of Love.”

The laws of nature that he loved to trace Have worked, at last, to veil from us his face; The dear old elms and ivy-covered walls Will miss his presence, and the stately halls His trumpet-voice; while in their joys Sorrow will shadow those he called “my boys”!