The Toilers

Where now men huddle together and whisper and harken,

Or hold their bleak hands over embers that die out

and darken.

The anarchies gather and thunder: few, few are the fraters,

And loud is the revel at night in the camp of the

traitors.

Say, Shelley, where are you-where are you? our hearts are a-breaking!

The fight in the terrible darkness-the shame— the forsaking!

The leaves shower down and are sport for the winds that come after;

And so are the Toilers in all lands the jest and the laughter

Of nobles—the Toilers scourged on in the furrow as cattle,

Or flung as a meat to the cannons that hunger in

battle.

The world's sad petrels dwell for evermore
On windy headland or on ocean floor,
Or pierce the violent skies with perilous flights
That fret men in their palaces o' nights,

Breaking enchanted slumber's easeful boat

With shudderings of their wild and dolorous note;
They blow about the black and barren skies,
They fill the night with ineffectual cries.

There is for them not anything before,

But sound of sea and sight of soundless shore,

On the Gulf of Night

Save when the darkness glimmers with a ray,
And Hope sings softly, Soon it will be day.
Then for a golden space the shades are thinned,
And dawn seems blowing seaward on the wind.
But soon the dark comes wilder than before,
And swift around them breaks a sullen roar;
The tempest calls to windward and to lea,
And they are sea-birds on the homeless sea.

The harvest moon has dwindled-they have housed the corn and rye;

And now the idle reapers lounge against the bolted doors

Without are hungry harvesters, within enchanted

stores.

Lo, they had bread while they were out a-toiling in the sun:

Now they are strolling beggars, for the harvest work

is done.

A Harvest Song

They are the gods of husbandry: they gather in the sheaves,

But when the autumn strips the wood, they're drifting with the leaves.

They plow and sow and gather in the glory of the

corn;

They know the noon, they know the pitiless rains before the morn;

They know the sweep of furrowed fields that darken in the gloom

A little while their hope on earth, then evermore their tomb.