Merival, of a mother fair and good, A father sound in body and in mind, Rich through three thousand acres left to him By that same father dying, mother dead These many years, a bachelor, lived alone In the rambling house his father built of stone Cut from the quarry near at hand, above The river's bend, before it meets the island Where Starved Rock rises. Here he had returned, After his Harvard days, took up the task Of these three thousand acres, while his father Aging, relaxed his hand. From farm to farm Rode daily, kept the books, bred cattle, sheep, Raised seed corn, tried the secrets of DeVries, And Burbank in plant breeding. Day by day, His duties ended, he sat at a window In a great room of books where lofty shelves Were packed with cracking covers; newer books Flowed over on the tables, round the globes And statuettes of bronze. Upon the wall The portraits hung of father and of mother, And two moose heads above the mantel stared, The trophies of a hunt in youth. So Merival At a bay window sat in the great room, Felt and beheld the stream of life and thought Flow round and through him, to a sound in key With his own consciousness, the murmurous voice Of his own soul. Along a lawn that sloped Some hundred feet to the river he would muse. Or through the oaks and elms and silver birches Between the plots of flowers and rows of box Look at the distant scene of hilly woodlands. And why no woman in his life, no face Smiling from out the summer house of roses, Such riotous flames against the distant green? And why no sons and daughters, strong and fair, To use these horses, ponies, tramp the fields, Shout from the tennis court, swim, skate and row? He asked himself the question many times, And gave himself the answer. It was this: