24

THE CITY

As prisoners count the ray of sunshine

dear

That filters dimly through their prison bars;
So my
heart burns to feel the twilight near,
And the far presence of the inviolate stars.

Then does the Spirit of the Wise and Fair Break from her sepulchre and walk the town, The iron bonds are loosened everywhere— No pavement gray can crush the green grass down.

A DREAM

BEHIND the scenes, before the play,
I watched the spirits dress their parts :
They decked themselves in robes of clay,
With patient skill and finished arts.

One moulds in beauty a white face,
One blurs the outline coarse and rough,

One wraps
And one goes clad in tattered stuff.

herself in furs and lace,

One soul has got a golden crown,
Of strutting pride she takes her fill,
Another gambols as a clown

With all her limbs at her own will.

One paints a pale ancestral woe

On high cheek bones and pencilled brow,

One has a world to overthrow

And one goes

forth to drive the plough.

One fills with heavy words and long The measure of man's patience up, Whilst one pours out the shining song Like wine into a golden cup.

One dreams a joyous dream and dear, And smiles on life with flashing eyes, One carves on furrowed brows austere

The deep-set wrinkles of the wise.

One

wraps herself in raiment fine

And poses as a warrior-lord,

One thinks the human form Divine,

And Life herself her own reward.

Content one gains her heart's desire
In carven beauty clear and trim,

Whilst one seeks for the Sacred Fire

To mould her rugged features dim.

But ever all the spirits said,

'We swathe our limbs in robes of clay And veil our lightning from the dead, And hide our secret selves away.

'Behind the brows of king or slave The selfsame secret lingers still,

The Rich, the Poor, the Base, the Brave

Can but in dreams our dream fulfil,'