Primordial. A Poem

304 IMPROVE WENT KRA mounted Dent and moved carefully away with his man and packs into the perils of the night. Where to go became a problem. They followed up a dry gulch which echoed like an empty barrel, — they climbed out over a steep sand-hill, crossed a flat, broken country, and behold they were lost. No familiar point rose out of the gloom to guide them, and no star glimmered through the clouds above. They had stopped in a patch of dried sand-grass and shadscale, and dismi uniting, they slipped the head-stalls back over their horses' ears, and stood wearily by while the hungry creatures nibbled the stale provender. I TO BE CONTINUED.) Primordial Somewhere I've heard a melody that lingers in my ears, So plaintive, sad and tender, that my eyes oft fill with tears, A strain of half-remembered tones, a chord in minor key, Repeating o'er and o'er some theme of unknown minstrelsy. The low, sweet tones of woodland airs, the murmur of a shore, The plaint of rustling, wind-swept plains, that moan forevermore; A solitude on mountain tops where life seems like a dream; The lonesome, silent lake's domain, the strange, white desert's gleam, The canyon's rugged cliffs and crags, the northern lights aflame, All these intone that melody, but tell not whence it came. Again, I've heard it in my dreams, a singer's low refrain. A rhapsody of love's sweet hope, a threnody of pain: And ever through the music thrills the undertones I hear, A measure of heart-longings, of joy, of grief and fear; An ill-defined foreboding, an expectancy, a wraith Dispirited, and wailing of his unrequited faith: And I wander from my dreamland, from its fantasies and fears, Ever hearing its sad murmur ling'ring on thro' all the years. Methinks it is a memory from some primordial day, An echo from a far-off strand where summer breezes sway The lotus in the limpid pools, the palm, the vine, the rose, — That land of far-off yesterdays, one feels, but never knows. Joseph Longking Townsend. Jan. 1, 1914