Explore "Rutherford Mcdowell" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
They brought me ambrotypes / Of the old pioneers to enlarge.
And sometimes one sat for me --
Someone who was in being / When giant hands from the womb of the world / Tore the republic.
What was it in their eyes? --
For I could never fathom / That mystical pathos of drooped eyelids, / And the serene sorrow of their eyes.
It was like a pool of water, / Amid oak trees at the edge of a forest, / Where the leaves fall, / As you hear the crow of a cock / From a far-off farm house, seen near the hills / Where the third generation lives, and the strong men / And the strong women are gone and forgotten.
And these grand-children and great grand-children / Of the pioneers!
Truly did my camera record their faces, too, / With so much of the old strength gone, / And the old faith gone, / And the old mastery of life gone, / And the old courage gone, / Which labors and loves and suffers and sings / Under the sun!