Explore "The Old Gray Wall" by Bliss Carman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Time out of mind I have stood / Fronting the frost and the sun, / That the dream of the world might endure, / And the goodly will be done.
Did the hand of the builder guess, / As he laid me stone by stone, / A heart in the granite lurked, / Patient and fond as his own?
Lovers have leaned on me / Under the summer moon, / And mowers laughed in my shade / In the harvest heat at noon.
Children roving the fields / With early flowers in spring, / Old men turning to look, / When they heard a bluebird sing,
Have seen me a thousand times / Standing here in the sun, / Yet never a moment dreamed / Whose likeness they gazed upon.
Ah, when will ye understand, / Mortals who strive and plod, -- / Who rests on this old gray wall / Lays a hand on the shoulder of God!