Railed at the drought, the worm, the rust, the grass; Protested ne'er again 'twould come to pass; With many an oh and if and but alas Parried or swallowed searching questions rude, And kissed the dust to soften Dives's mood. At last, small loans by pledges great renewed, He issues smiling from the fatal door, And buys with lavish hand his yearly store With bitter heart and ever-brooding mind In dust, in rain, with might and main, And thrilled with Bulls' or Bears' alternate wail- 161 And thus from year to year, through hope and 171 fear, With many a curse and many a secret tear, Striving in vain his cloud of debt to clear, At last He woke to find his foolish dreaming past, Of squandering scamps and quacks that lined his way With vile array, From rascal statesman down to petty knave; A gamester's catspaw and a banker's slave. Then, worn and gray, and sick with deep unrest, 181 He fled away into the oblivious West, Old hill! old hill! thou gashed and hairy Lear E'en pitying Spring, will vainly strive to cheer- Yet shall the great God turn thy fate, Lo, through hot waverings of the August morn, And tend thee, And defend thee, With antique sinew and with modern art. I MY SPRINGS IN the heart of the Hills of Life, I know Not larger than two eyes, they lie Shot through with lights of stars and dawns, Always when the large Form of Love I Always when Faith with stifling stress Always when Charity and Hope, I Always, when Art on perverse wing I gaze in my two springs and see A charm that brings him back to me. When Labor faints, and Glory fails, O Love, O Wife, thine eyes are they, -My springs from out whose shining gray That feed my life's bright Lake of Dreams. II 21 ཙ་ 41 51 Oval and large and passion-pure Yet calmly unafraid of death; Thronged, like two dove-cotes of gray doves, And science-loves and story-loves, And loves for all that God and man And broideries and supple grace And diamonds and the whole sweet round Dear eyes, dear eyes and rare complete— I THE SYMPHONY "O TRADE! O Trade! would thou wert dead! The Time needs heart-'tis tired of head: We're all for love," the violins said. Grant thee, O Trade! thine uttermost hope. And base it deep as devils grope : When all's done, what hast thou won Of the only sweet that 's under the sun? Of true love's least, least ecstasy?" Then, with a bridegroom's heart-beats trembling, As when the bridegroom leads the bride, Of gain by cunning and plus by sale? The poor, the poor, the poor, they stand 'Each day, all day' (these poor folks say), In the same old year-long, drear-long way, We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns, We sieve mine-meshes under the hills, And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills, To relieve, O God, what manner of ills?— The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die; And so do we, and the world 's a sty; Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry? Swinehood hath no remedy II 21 31 |