The Last Camp-Fire

Scar not earth’s breast that I may have Somewhere above her heart a grave; Mine was a life whose swift desire Bent ever less to dust than fire; Then through the swift, white path of flame Send 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 above The still eyes of the stars I love; No hymn, save as the midnight wind Comes 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 blur Of hoarded pitch more sweet than myrrh; Cedar to stream across the dark Its scented embers spark on spark; Long shaggy boughs of juniper, And silvery, odorous sheafs of fir; Spice wood to die in incense smoke Against 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 blow To all earth’s winds, a finer snow; There is no wind of hers but I Have 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 know No master’s rule, no ordered row.

To be, if nature will, at length Part of some great tree’s noble strength; Growth of the grass; to live anew In many a wild flower’s richer hue; Find immortality indeed In ripened heart of fruit and seed. Time grants not any man redress Of his broad law, forgetfulness:-- I parley not with shaft and stone, Content that in the perfume blown From next year’s hillsides something sweet, And mine, shall make earth more complete.