Bristol news. [volume] (Bristol, Va. & Tenn.) 1867-189?, 1875-02-23
THE SKULL IN TIE GOLD DRIFT.

What hoi dumb jester, cease to grin and mask it,
Grim courier, thou has stayed upon the road
Yield up the secret of this battered easket,
This shard, where once a living soul abode;
What dost thou here? how long hast lain imbedded
In crystal sands, the drift of Times despair,
Thine earth to earth with aureate dover welded
Thy parts all changed TO something rich and rare!
Voiceless thou art, and yet revelation
of that most ancient word beneath the New;
But who shall guess thy race, thy name and station,
lions and Gons these powders grew?
What alchemy make thy Yisage Gker
Its untransmuted shape, thy nesh restore,
Resolve to bloc again thy golden ichor,
Possess thee of the life thou hadst before?
Before! And when? What ages immemoriaI
Have passed since daylight fell where thou dost
sleepl
What molten strata, ay and aotsam boreal,
Haye shielded well thy rest, and pressed thee
dSep!
Thou little wlst what mighty floods descended,
How sprawled the aTmoTed monsters in their camp,
Nor heardest, when the watery cycle ended,
The mastodon and mammoth DER thee tramp.
How seemed this globe of ours when thou didst
When, in its Justly youth, there sPrang to birth
All that hath life, unnurturned, and the planet
Was paradise, the true Saturnan EARTH
Far toward the poles was stretched the happy gar
den;
Earth kept it fair by warmth from her own breast
Toll had not come to dwarf her sons snd harden;
No crime there was ne WantD perturbcd their
rest.
How lived thy kind? Was there on duty blended
Witha their toiless joy-no grand desire2:
Perchance shepherds on the meads they tended
Their focks, and knew the p stOrial pipe and
Until hundred happy generations,
Whose birth and death had neither pain nor fear,
At last, in ripper ages, brought the nations
To modes which we renew who greet thee here.
How stately then they Luilt their royal cities,
With what strong engines speeded to and fro
What music thrilled their souls; what poets dities
Made youth with love and aye with honor glow?
And had they then their Homer, kepler, BaconH
Did some Columbus find an unknown cline?
Vas there an archetyp'l Christ, fOrsaken
Of those he died 10 save, in that far time?
When came the end? What terrible coHvulsion
Heaved from within the Edrth's distended shell?
What pent-up demons, bytheir fierce repulsion,
Made of that sunlit crust sunless hell?
How, when the honr was ripe, those dcathful
In one resistless doom o'erwhelmed We all;
Enguifed the seas and dried the river courses,
And made the forests and he cities fall!
All me! with what sudden, dreadful thunder
The whole round world was split from pole to
pole!
Down sank the continents, the waters under
And fire burst forth where now the oceans roll
Of those wan flames the dismal exhalatiOns
Stiff ed anon, each living creatures breath;
Dear Life was driven from its utmos stations,
And seethed beneath the smoking pail of Death!
Then hrawling leapful hight you helmed giants
Tue proud Sierrls on the skies laid hold;
Their watch and ward have hidden time defiance.
Guarding thy grave amid the sand of gold,
Thy kind was then no more! What untold ages.
Ere Man, renewed from earth by slow d. gress
Woke TO the strife he with Nature wages
Ger ruder lands and more tempesfuous seas,
How poor the gold, that made thy burial splen-
did,
Beside one single annal OF thy race,
On implement, fragment that attended
Thy life-whIch now hath left not even trace!
From the souls realm awhile recall thy spirit,
See how the Ian Is spread, how flows the main,
The tribes that in thy stead the globe inherit.
Their grand unrest, their eager Joy and pain.
Beneath our feet thousand ages moulder,
GTayer ki-s than thine, he winds more chill;
Thine the young world and ours the hoaTer, colder;
But N2p's unialtering hearts is dauntless still,
And yet-and yet like thine his solemn story;
Crepe where he WILL transition lies bSfore;
We, too. must pass! our wisdom, works, and glory
In turn shall yield, and change, and BIZ no more
E. e. Stedmldm.