Part 17 (1/2)

IV

Yea, wrap thy awful gulfs and acolytes Of lifted granite round with reachless snows.

Stand for Eternity while pilgrim rows Of all the nations envy thy repose.

Ensheath thy swart sublimities, unscaled.

Be that alone on earth which has not failed.

Be that which never yet has yearned or ailed, But since primeval Power upreared thy heights Has stood above all deaths and all delights.

V

And though thy loftier Brother shall be King, High-priest art thou to Brahma unrevealed, While thy white sanct.i.ty forever sealed In icy silence leaves desire congealed.

In ghostly ministrations to the sun, And to the mendicant stars and the moon-nun, Be holy still, till East to West has run, And till no sacrificial suffering On any shrine is left to tell life's sting.

Sc.u.m o' the Earth. [Robert Haven Schauffler]

I

At the gate of the West I stand, On the isle where the nations throng.

We call them ”sc.u.m o' the earth”;

Stay, are we doing you wrong, Young fellow from Socrates' land? -- You, like a Hermes so lissome and strong Fresh from the Master Praxiteles' hand?

So you're of Spartan birth?

Descended, perhaps, from one of the band -- Deathless in story and song -- Who combed their long hair at Thermopylae's pa.s.s?

Ah, I forget the straits, alas!

More tragic than theirs, more compa.s.sion-worth, That have doomed you to march in our ”immigrant cla.s.s”

Where you're nothing but ”sc.u.m o' the earth”.

II

You Pole with the child on your knee, What dower bring you to the land of the free?

Hark! does she croon That sad little tune That Chopin once found on his Polish lea And mounted in gold for you and for me?

Now a ragged young fiddler answers In wild Czech melody That Dvorak took whole from the dancers.

And the heavy faces bloom In the wonderful Slavic way; The little, dull eyes, the brows a-gloom, Suddenly dawn like the day.

While, watching these folk and their mystery, I forget that they're nothing worth; That Bohemians, Slovaks, Croatians, And men of all Slavic nations Are ”polacks” -- and ”sc.u.m o' the earth”.

III

Genoese boy of the level brow, Lad of the l.u.s.trous, dreamy eyes A-stare at Manhattan's pinnacles now In the first sweet shock of a hushed surprise; Within your far-rapt seer's eyes I catch the glow of the wild surmise That played on the Santa Maria's prow In that still gray dawn, Four centuries gone, When a world from the wave began to rise.

Oh, it's hard to foretell what high emprise Is the goal that gleams When Italy's dreams Spread wing and sweep into the skies.

Caesar dreamed him a world ruled well; Dante dreamed Heaven out of h.e.l.l; Angelo brought us there to dwell; And you, are you of a different birth? -- You're only a ”dago”, -- and ”sc.u.m o' the earth”!

IV