On the Composite Passing of Three Generations

photographed in Stillwater, Oklahoma on October 12, 2009

Where the grass is yellow-tangled / O’er a long-forgotten mound / Still a gray stone, lichen-hoary, / Lifts its record from the ground.

Now have passed three generations / Since the river quenched the life / Of the two, whose friends so crudely / Carved the stone with rustic knife.

Druid trees with gray moss bearded / Whisper o’er the mounded grass / Wierdly [sic] meet with incantations / Generations as they pass.

The full text of ‘River Hopewell’ by William Patrick MacKenzie as appearing in Voices and Undertones in Song and Poem. Published by Equity Publishing Co., New York, 1889.

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