The Rock-Breaker

Pausing he leans upon his sledge, and looksA 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 thunder-smoke,

Its life a sacrifice

To some blind purpose of the Destinies.

These will perish like the shapes of air
songs
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 Karnak, 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.

If we can be a bugle at her lips,

It is enough

To scatter her contagion on mankind.

с.к.