NOT ALONE FOR US by Ella Gilbert Ives

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Sep 23, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 37.

NOT ALONE FOR US.

By Ella Gilbert Ives

THE forest is old, centuries old; but each spring decks it anew in the fresh garment of eternal youth. Does the pine tree's ancestry outdate the bird's?—I do not know. But for ages back, hermit and hermitage must each have joyed in the possession of the other. We mortals are prone to think that earth, with all that it contains, was made for us. The birds know better. That exquisite warbler who wears the forest colors on his back, and from his 'sweet divided throat' sings, 'Trees, trees, murmuring trees!' but extols his counterpart, and knows that when God thought a bird, his thought nestled in a tree bough. The meadows too, with their springing gladness of buttercup and clover, were they not preempted by bobolink to serve his finer uses, long before man invented the scythe? The field sparrow claims his sheltering bush in that trill of absolute ownership and content therewith. And the hermit thrush—without that gentle bright-eyes, there were no hermitage. He is the Chrysostom of the wood by virtue of his golden mouth; and hard the heart that would not melt under his eloquence. He blends the divine right of poet and of musician, to search out our finest feelings, our deepest thoughts, and reveal them to us. A mirror he creates and shatters. Could it last, a Jefferies need not struggle in vain to tell the story of his heart.

That matchless strain again, and yet again, Grave minstrel of the wood! I know not why. But every crystal drop is like a sigh From Beauty's soul, which travaileth in pain To yield her essence to the adoring brain And passionate heart. Forever could I lie At Beauty's door, as courtier at the high Behest of queen: tho evermore in vain. Nay, not in vain, I wait for Beauty's heir, Thou sweet revealer of love's secret stair! To climb and climb yet never to attain, Is in itself an ecstasy of pain Than joy more sweet. To seek the shining goal The keenest rapture of a climbing soul. —Ella Gilbert Ives.