The wonder this. For some there are no trees; Or in the trees no beauty and no mirth:-- Those dullest millions, pent In life-long banishment From all the gifts and creatures of the earth, Shut in the inner darkness of the town; Those blighted things you see, But the Sun sees not, at its going down:-- Warped outcasts of some human forestry; Blind victims of the blind, Wreckt ones and dark of mind, With the poor fruit, after their piteous kind.
And if you take some Old One to the fields, To see what Nature yields With fullest hands to men already free, It well may be, As on some indecipherable book The Guest will look, With eyes too old,--too old, too dim to see; Too old, too old to learn; Or to discern-- Before it slips away, The joy of such a late half-holiday!
Proffer those starved eyes your belated cup: They look not up.
Too late, too late for any sky to do Brief kindness with its blue.
And what behold they, then?
In the shamed moment, when Old eyes bow down again?
_Down in the night and blackness of the heart, The drowned things start.
And he recks nothing of the meadow air, Because of what is There.
Lost things of hope and sorrow without tongue: The human lilies, sprung Out of the ooze, and trodden, Even as they breathed and clung!
Lost lilies, bruised and sodden; Lost faces, gleaming there, Where misery blasphemes the sacred young!
Mute outcry, most, of those Small suffering hands defrauded of their rose; Faces the daylight shuns; Ruinous faces of the little ones,-- Pale witness, unaware.
Starved lips, and withering blood-- O broken in the bud!-- Blank eyes, and blighted hair._
(_O golden, golden tree!
Bear yet awhile with me._)
So is it, haply, when Dull eyes look up, and then Dull eyes look down again.
Waste no vain holiday on such as these; For them there is no joy in blossomed trees.
V
For them there is no joy in blossomed trees.
And with what eye-shut ease We leave them, at the last, for company, The Tree, Whose two stark boughs no springtime yet unfurled, Ever, since time began; Nor bloom so strange to see!-- Behold, the Man, With His two arms outstretched to fold the world.
_O, do you remember?--How it came to be?
Far, golden windows gazing from the sh.o.r.e; Golden ebb of daylight; heart could hold no more: Beloved and Beloved, and the sea._
_Westward the sun,--low, slow and golden; Eastward the moon climbed, honey-pale.
O do you remember? while our eyes were holden, Close, close upon us,--the Golden Sail?
Wind-swift she came,--thing of living flame, Sea-breathing Glory, to make the heart afraid!
The ripples, fold on fold Of coiling gold, Trailing a thousand ways Her golden maze, Rocked in a golden tumult, every one, The gondolas, the ships ..
Westward she made .....
A portent from the sky,--gone by, gone by, To golden, far eclipse; ...
Into the Sun._
_Behold, a mystery That shook to golden throbbing all the sea.
Oh, and what needed one more wonder be For thee and me, Beloved? thee and me?_
RICH MAN, POOR MAN
"_Rich man, Poor man, Beggar man, Thief, Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief._"
I
Highway, stretched along the sun, Highway, thronged till day is done; Where the drifting Face replaces Wave on wave on wave of faces, And you count them, one by one: "_Rich man--Poor man--Beggar man--Thief: Doctor--Lawyer--Merchant--Chief._"
Is it soothsay?--Is it fun?
Young ones, like as wave and wave; Old ones, like as grave and grave; Tide on tide of human faces With what human undertow!
Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief!-- Tell me of the eddying s.p.a.ces, Show me where the lost ones go; Like and lost, as leaf and leaf.
What"s your secret grim refrain Back and forth and back again, Once, and now, and always so?
Three days since, and who was Thief?
Three days more, and who"ll be Chief?
Oh, is that beyond belief, _Doctor, Lawyer--Merchant-Chief?_
(_Down, like gra.s.s before the mowing; On, like wind in its mad going:-- Wind and dust forever blowing._)
Highway, shrill with murderous pride, Highway, of the swarming tide!
Why should my way lead me deeper?
I am not my Brother"s keeper.
II
Byway, ambushed with the dark, Byway, where the ears may hark; Live and fierce when day is done, You, that do without the Sun:-- What"s this game you bring to nought?-- Muttering like a thing distraught, Reckoning like a simpleton?
(Since the hearing must be brief,-- Living or a dying thief!) Cobbled with the anguished stones That the thoroughfare disowns; Stones they gave you for your bread Of the disinherited!
Where the Towers of Hunger loom, Crowding in the dregs of doom; Where the lost sky peering through Sees no more the grudging gra.s.s,-- Only this mud-mirrored blue, Like some shattered looking-gla.s.s.
(_Under, with the sorry reaping!
Underneath the stones of weeping, For the Dark to have in keeping._)
Byway, you, so foully marred; You, whose sodden walls and scarred, See no light, but only where Fevered lamps are set to stare In the eyes of such despair!
Tell me--as a Byway can-- Was this Beggar once a Man?
"_Rich man--Poor man--Beggar man--Thief!_"
Like and lost as leaf and leaf.
Stammering out your wrongs and shames, Must you cry their very names?
Must you sob your shame, your grief?
--"_Poor man--Poor man!--Beggar--Thief._"
III
Highway, where the Sun is wide; Byway, where the lost ones hide, Byway, where the Soul must hark, Byway, dreadful with the Dark: Can you nothing do with Man?
Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief, Learns he nothing, even of grief?
Must it still be all his wonder Some men soar, while some go under?
He has heard, and he has seen: Make him know the thing you mean.
He has prayed since time began,-- He"s so curious of the Plan!
He will pray you till he die, For the Whence and for the Why; Mad for wisdom--when "tis cheaper!
"_Why should my way lead me deeper?
Am I, then, my Brother"s keeper?_"
Show him, Byway, if you can; Lest he end as he began, Rich and poor,--this beggar, Man.