From the Hand of a Child

Above the sea I saw a wreath of girls,
Fading to air in far-off poppy fields.

I saw a blithe youth take the open road:
His thoughts ran on before him merrily;
Sometimes he dipped his feet in stirring
brooks;

At night he slept
he slept upon a bed of
boughs.

This in my soul. Then suddenly a shape, A spectre wearing yet the mask of dust Jostled against me as he passed, and lo! The jarring city and the drift of feet Surged back upon me like the grieving sea.

At the Meeting of Seven Valleys

At the meeting of seven valleys in the west,
I came upon a host of silent souls,

Seated beside still waters on the grass.
It was a place of memories and tears-
Terrible tears. I rested in a wood,

And there the bird that mourns for Itys sang

Itys that touched the tears of all the world. But climbing onward toward the purple peaks,

I passed, on silent feet, white multitudes,
Beyond the reach of peering memories,
Lying asleep upon the scented banks,
Their bodies burning with celestial fire.
A mighty awe came on me at the thought—
The strangeness of the beatific sleep,

The vision of God, the mystic bread of rest.

The Rock-Breaker

Pausing he leans upon his sledge, and

looks

A labor-blasted toiler;

So have I seen, on Shasta's top, a pine

Stand silent on a cliff,

Stript of its glory of green leaves and boughs,

Its great trunk split by fire,

Its gray bark blackened by the thundersmoke,

Its life a sacrifice

To some blind purpose of the destinies.

These Songs Will Perish

These songs will perish like the shapes of air

The singer and the songs die out forever; But star-eyed Truth (greater than song or singer)

Sweeps hurrying on: far off she sees a

gleam

Upon a peak. She cried to man of old
To build the enduring, glad Fraternal

State

Cries yet through all the ruins of the world— Through Karnack, through the stones of Babylon

Cries for a moment through these fading songs.

On winged feet, a form of fadeless youth,
She goes to meet the coming centuries,

These Songs Will Perish

And, hurrying, snatches up some human reed,

Blows through it once her terror-bearing

note,

And breaks and throws away.

It is enough

If we can be a bugle at her lips,
To scatter her contagion on mankind.