Here, Echo, was thy reign of old,
Among these hills, a mystic crowd
Whose thunder rolled
When they speak loud
Still shocks the sea: here thy hair grew
Long as a cloud whose shadow drew
Itself o'er chaos, ere Time rose
With life and death and all of those
Who live and die, whose weakest word
Thine ears have heard;
Still as thou sitt'st with sightless eyes
On a bright cloud in the lone vale,
Or leaning o'er a mountain rill
Dost hark the ebbing roar
Of a dead sea on some primeval shore,
Whose unrecorded memories
Are like the language of old gods who fell
From some starred pinnacle
In the lost years as all things will
Too fall at last, and the great tale
Of Time be never more retold;
Ay, e'en when chaos is re-rolled
O'er the opprest and the oppressor, thou
(Unseen, and but a word within that wail)
Shalt pass as in a trance where thought may go
When all is lying low.
Echo.
written byRobert Crawford
© Robert Crawford