Adam Poem by Silas Weir Mitchell

A HUNGARIAN LEGEND

FAR in Asia, saith the legend,
On a peak whose nameless towers
Use the plains a hundred miles off
For their dial of the hours;

Where the tallest Himalaya
Rises sad because so lonely,
Whence the eagle swoops in terror,
And the stars of God are only,—

Sitteth one of ancient visage,
One more strange than aught below him,
One who lived so near to God once
That for man we scarce should know him;—

Far above the busy world tribes,
Miles above the pine-trees, bending,
Lonely as when God first made him,
There he keepeth watch unending.

Wearily his eyes are searching
Wide and far amid the nations,
In their centuried depths a million
Pictures of earth's desolations.

And his garments long and ample
Lie as though in death he slumbered;
Never breeze hath stirred their stillness
Since his earthly days were numbered.

But their tints are ever changing,
Painted by the woes of mortals,—
Scarlet, mottled, darkened, whitened,
Like the morning's cloud of portals;

For the mists of human passion,
Anger, sorrow, love, devotion,
Rise from town, and mart, and forest,
Float from hill, and field, and ocean,

And with hate and murder's crimson
Stain and blot his mantle's brightness,
Or with love, and faith, and patience,
Bleach its folds to noonday whiteness.

Yet with solemn eyes he waiteth,
Since for sins that rack him ever
One still greater heart grows sadder
With a love that wearies never;

For above the sad earth's murmurs,
And above the pale star's gray light,
Far beyond unthought-of systems,
And the shining homes of daylight,

One there is, at whose dear coming
Peace and love his robes shall whiten,
When, his earth-long vigil ended,
Death his troubled face shall brighten.