And the heart of man is as a wanderer looking for the light in a win

dow,

And the kiss and warm joy of his beloved.

THE PRIEST

Man of Song and Man of Science,

Truly you are as people on the outside of a house,

And one of you only sees that it is made of stone, and its windows of

glass, and that fire burns in the hearth,

And the other of you sees that the house is beautiful and very human, But I have gone inside the house,

And I live with the host in that house

And have broken bread with him, and drunk his wine,

And seen the transfiguration that love and awe make in the brain.
For that house is the world, and the Lord is my host and my father:
It is my father's house.

THE SCIENTIST

He that has gone mad and insane may call himself a king,

And behold himself in a king's palace, with feasting, and dancing women, and with captains,

And none can convince him that he is mad,

Slave of hallucination. . . .

We that weigh the atom and weigh a world in the night, and we
Who probe down into the brain, and see how desire discolors reality,
And we that see how chemical energy changes and transforms the
molecule,

So that one thing and another changes and so man arises

With neither microscope, nor telescope, nor spectroscope, nor finest

violet ray

Have we found any Father lurking in the intricate unreasonable drive of things

And the strange chances of nature.

THE POET

O Priest, is it not enough that the world and a Woman are very beautiful,

And that the works and tragic lives of men are terribly glorious?

There is a dance of miracles, of miracles holding hands in a chain around the Earth and out through space to the moon, and to the stars, and beyond the stars,

And to behold this dance is enough;

So much laughter, and secret looking, and glimpses of wonder, and dreams of terror.

It is enough! it is enough!

THE PRIEST

Enough? I see what is enough!

Machinery is enough for a Scientist,

And Beauty is enough for a Poet;

But in the hearts of men and women, and in the thirsty hearts of little children

There is a hunger, and there is an unappeasable longing,

For a Father and for the love of a Father

For the root of a soul is mystery,

And the Night is mystery,

And in that mystery men would open inward into Eternity,

And know love, the Lord.

Blessed be his works, and his angels, and his sons crowned with his glory!

[A pause. The Woman with a burden in her arms comes in slowly.] James Oppenheim

CLAY HILLS

It is easy to mould the yielding clay.
And many shapes grow into beauty

Under the facile hand.

But forms of clay are lightly broken;

They will lie shattered and forgotten in a dingy corner.

But underneath the slipping clay

Is rock. . . .

I would rather work in stubborn rock

All the years of my life,

And make one strong thing

And set it in a high, clean place,

To recall the granite strength of my desire.

Jean Starr Untermeyer

COOL TOMBS

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin . . . in the dust, in the cool tombs.

And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes. . . in the dust, in the cool tombs.

Pocahontas body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember? ... in the dust, in the cool tombs?

Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns . . . tell me if the lovers are losers. . . tell me if any get more than the lovers... in the dust . . . in the cool tombs.

Carl Sandburg

LOAM

In the loam we sleep,
In the cool moist loam,
To the lull of years that pass
And the break of stars,

From the loam, then,

The soft warm loam,

We rise:

To shape of rose leaf,
Of face and shoulder.

We stand, then,

To a whiff of life,

Lifted to the silver of the sun

Over and out of the loam

A day.

Carl Sandburg

Brother Tree:

IDEALISTS

Why do you reach and reach?

do you dream some day to touch the sky? Brother Stream:

Why do you run and run?

do you dream some day to fill the sea? Brother Bird:

Why do you sing and sing?

do you dream

HOW POEMS ARE MADE

"Si'l fait beau temps,"

Disait un papillon volage,

"S'il fait beau temps,

Je vais folâtrer dans les champs."
"Et moi," lui dit l'abeille sage,
"J'irai me mettre à mon ouvrage
S'il fait beau temps."

More than half of the people who think about poetry prefer to believe that the poet, like the butterfly, flutters gaily in the sunlight and sips honey. They like to think that because he is fed on the honey of inspiration his wings are glorious in flight. But poets themselves, and those who know most about them, tell us that they are as devout in labor as the proverbial bee. And unless poetry is a thing by itself, utterly unlike the other great arts, unlike music, sculpture, architecture, the dance, the drama, it is reasonable to suppose that labor must be a part of a poet's life and that there must be a travail before beauty is born. Yet these two theories, which we may as well call the butterfly theory and the bee theory, are not necessarily irreconcilable. A poet does live creatively by virtue of inspiration. But inspiration is not a thing peculiar to poets. All mankind knows inspiration, and if it did not belong as truly to the housewife and the bricklayer and the stockbroker as to the poet, poets would have no understanding audience. But a poet is a poet by reason of his ability to do with inspiration what these others can not do with it or can not do so well. It is the poet who makes the delicate cell, the poem, in which the honey of inspiration is stored, to be a joy for all in the days when no flowers blossom and the world is dour and cold. That he may know how to make that cell the poet must work!