Sin awakened with a growl. Ah, poor girl! she had a right To a blessing from the light; Title-deeds to sky and earth God gave to her at her birth; But, before they were enjoyed, Poverty had made them void, And had drunk the sunshine up From all nature's ample cup, Leaving her a first-born's share In the dregs of darkness there. Often, on the sidewalk bleak, Hungry, all alone, and weak, She has seen, in night and storm, Rooms o'erflow with firelight
But to have her garment brush 'Gainst the girl whose fingers thin Wove the weary broidery in, Bending backward from her toil, Lest her tears the silk might soil, And, in midnights chill and murk, Stitched her life into the work, Shaping from her bitter thought Heart's-ease and forget-me-not, Satirizing her despair
With the emblems woven there. Little doth the wearer heed Of the heart-break in the brede; 70 A hyena by her side
Skulks, down-looking,-it is Pride. He digs for her in the earth,
In his eyes that stealthy gleam Was not learned of sky or stream, But it has the cold, hard glint Of new dollars from the mint. Open now your spirit's eyes, Look through that poor clay dis- guise
Which has thickened, day by day, Till it keeps all light at bay, And his soul in pitchy gloom Gropes about its narrow tomb, 100 From whose dank and slimy walls Drop by drop the horror falls. Look! a serpent lank and cold Hugs his spirit fold on fold; From his heart, all day and night, It doth suck God's blessed light. Drink it will, and drink it must, Till the cup holds naught but dust; All day long he hears it hiss, Writhing in its fiendish bliss; 110 All night long he sees its eyes Flicker with foul ecstasies, As the spirit ebbs away Into the absorbing clay. Who is he that skulks, afraid Of the trust he has betrayed, Shuddering if perchance a gleam Of old nobleness should stream Through the pent, unwholesome
By more instinct for the best? 'T is a poet who was sent For a bad world's punishment, By compelling it to see Golden glimpses of To Be, By compelling it to hear Songs that prove the angels near ; Who was sent to be the tongue Of the weak and spirit-wrung, 130 Whence the fiery-winged Despair In men's shrinking eyes might flare. 'T is our hope doth fashion us To base use or glorious:
He who might have been a lark Of Truth's morning, from the dark Raining down melodious hope Of a freer, broader scope, Aspirations, prophecies, Of the spirit's full sunrise, Chose to be a bird of night, That, with eyes refusing light, Hooted from some hollow tree Of the world's idolatry. 'T is his punishment to hear Sweep of eager pinions near, And his own vain wings to feel Drooping downward to his heel, All their grace and import lost, Burdening his weary ghost: Ever walking by his side He must see his angel guide, Who at intervals doth turn Looks on him so sadly stern, With such ever-new surprise Of hushed anguish in her eyes, That it seems the light of day From around him shrinks away, Or drops blunted from the wall Built around him by his fall. Then the mountains, whose white peaks
He must see, where prophets sit, Turning east their faces lit,
Whence, with footsteps beautiful, It smiles, but never brings you
To the earth, yet dim and dull, They the gladsome tidings bring Of the sunlight's hastening: Never can these hills of bliss
Be o'erclimbed by feet like his !
It lights, her nature draws not nigh;
169 'T is but that yours is growing
To her assays; - yes, try and Above our squabbling businesstry, You'll get no deeper than her Like Phidian Jove's, his beauty
One problem still defies thy His first swift word, talaria-shod, Exuberant with conscious God,
art; Thou never canst compute for her Out of the choir of planets blots The distance and diameter
Of any simple human heart.
The present earth with all its
Himself unshaken as the sky, His words, like whirlwinds, spin
Systems and creeds pellmell to
'T is strange as to a deaf man's
In some sea-lulled Hesperides, Thou movest through the jarring street,
Secluded from the noise of feet
By her gift-blossom in thy hand, Thy branch of palm from Holy Land;
Yet smile not, worldling, for in No trace is here of ruin's fiery
Yet there is something round thy Kept sacred for us in the heart of lips friends; That prophesies the coming But these were idle fancies, satisdoom,
The soft, gray herald-shadow ere the eclipse
With the mere husk of this great mystery,
Notches the perfect disk with And dwelling in the outward shows gloom; A something that would banish Heaven is not mounted to on wings
A banished man in field and The spirit climbs, and hath its
Nor showed me his mild face: oft With every anguish of our earthly
Of calm and peace and safe forget- The spirit's sight grows clearer; fulness,
Of folded hands, closed eyes, and When Jesus touched the blind
And slumber sound beneath a
man's lids with clay. Life is the jailer, Death the angel sent
Of faults forgotten, and an inner To draw the unwilling bolts and
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