Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns And marked their ways upon the ancient deep? Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf There is no shape more terrible than this— More tongued with censure of the world's blind greedMore filled with signs and portents for the soulMore fraught with menace to the universe. What gulfs between him and the seraphim! O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give to God, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? Give back the upward looking and the light; O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, After the silence of the centuries? Edwin Markham [1852 THE MAN WITH THE HOE A REPLY Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way: she better understands her own affairs than we.-MONTAIGNE NATURE reads not our labels, "great" and "small"; Who, striving, win and hold the vacant place; All are of royal race. Him, there, rough-cast, with rigid arm and limb, Of his rude realm ruler and demigod, Lord of the rock and clod. With Nature is no "better" and no "worse," On this bared head no curse. Humbled it is and bowed; so is he crowned Diverse the burdens on the one stern road Where bears each back its load; Varied the toil, but neither high nor low. With pen or sword or hoe, He that has put out strength, lo, he is strong; Of him with spade or song Nature but questions,-"This one, shall he stay?" She answers "Yea," or "Nay," "Well, ill, he digs, he sings"; and he bides on, Strength shall he have, the toiler, strength and grace, As he leaned, there, an oak where sea winds blow, Our brother with the hoe. No blot, no monster, no unsightly thing, The soil's long-lineaged king; His changeless realm, he knows it and commands; Erect enough he stands, Tall as his toil. Nor does he bow unblest: Labor he has, and rest. Need was, need is, and need will ever be For him and such as he; Cast for the gap, with gnarlèd arm and limb, The Mother molded him, Long wrought, and molded him with mother's care, Before she set him there. And aye she gives him, mindful of her own, Yea, since above his work he may not rise, She makes the field his skies. See! she that bore him, and metes out the lot, To scorn the rock whence he was hewn, the pit Lest he no more in native virtue stand, The earth-sword in his hand, But follow sorry phantoms to and fro, And let a kingdom go. John Vance Cheney [1848 AULD LANG SYNE SHOULD auld acquaintance be forgot, And days o' lang syne? For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne, We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet We twa hae rin about the braes, But we've wandered monie a weary fit Sin' auld lang syne. We twa hae paidl't i' the burn, Frae mornin' sun till dine; But seas between us braid hae roared Sin' auld lang syne. And here's a hand, my trusty fiere, And gie's a hand o' thine; And we'll tak a right guid willie-waught For auld lang syne. And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp, And surely I'll be mine, And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne! Robert Burns [1759-1796] THE MUSIC-MAKERS ISRAFEL And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures.-KORAN IN Heaven a spirit doth dwell As the angel Israfel, And the giddy stars (so legends tell), Tottering above In her highest noon, The enamoured moon Blushes with love, While, to listen, the red levin (With the rapid Pleiads, even, Pauses in Heaven. And they say (the starry choir Is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings, Of those unusual strings. But the skies that angel trod, Where deep thoughts are a duty, Where Love's a grown-up God, Where the Houri glances are Imbued with all the beauty Which we worship in a star. |