By HATTIE A. COOLEY.
The great, warm, yellow western sky,
Glows down on their eager faces;
Horizon tints of rose float nigh
Above the landscape’s graces.
The sun-god’s light has power to thrill
The priest with his victim gory;
The golden waves of sunset fill
Each soul with their mystic glory.
But in the twilight, gray and dim,
Both Faith and Hope are sleeping,
And not a thought goes up to Him
Who holds the sun in keeping.
At last, on priests who sacrifice,
On souls and altars burning,
A silent, double darkness lies,
And hides them past discerning.
Uncounted years since then have fled,
And buried deep the story
Of the silent nation lying dead
Amid these ruins hoary.
The sun still shines as bright to-day,
And glows as warm and tender
On stone-heaps gray, and dust and clay,
As once on the temple’s splendor.
And looking back we strain to see,
Upon these crumbling pages,
A glimpse of what the world would be
Shut out from God for ages.