Here is the freedom men die for,--die for but never know;
Here is the peace they pray for shrined in eternal snow;
Down on the plain the city moans with a human cry,
But here there is naught but silence,--peace, and the wide, wide sky. ...
Here is a tale the North Wind sang to me:
Hell hath set Mammon o'er a frozen land,
Crowned him with gold, put gold into his hand,
And men forsake their God to bow the knee ...
I came your way in the years gone by,
In the summers that now are old,
And then there was light in your beaming eye,
And love was living and hopes were high ...
Lucifer craved one boon of God
After his fall, as his own to hold;
So He gave him a mite in heaven's sight,
But lo! the gift that He gave was--Gold. ...
"Give us this day our daily bread!" O prayer
By Jesus taught, thou hast become a cry
For starveling mouths in Famine's ghastly lair--
A beggar's plaint when Dives passes by. ...
Late, late yestreen I saw the new moon,
With the old moon in her arms;
And I fear, I fear, my master dear!
We shall have a deadly storm.
Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence.