Edgar Lee Masters - Wallace Ferguson lyrics

THERE at Geneva where Mt. Blanc floated above The wine-hued lake like a cloud, when a breeze was blown Out of an empty sky of blue, and the roaring Rhone Hurried under the bridge through chasms of rock; And the music along the cafés was part of the splendor Of dancing water under a torrent of light; And the purer part of the genius of Jean Rousseau Was the silent music of all we saw or heard— There at Geneva, I say, was the rapture less Because I could not link myself with the I of yore, When twenty years before I wandered about Spoon River? Nor remember what I was nor what I felt? We live in the hour all free of the hours gone by. Therefore, O soul, if you lose yourself in d**h, And wake in some Geneva by some Mt. Blanc, What do you care if you know not yourself as the you Who lived and loved in a little corner of earth Known as Spoon River ages and ages vanished?