Part 19 (1/2)

The dreamy dog beside thee Presses against thy knee; He, too, oh, sweet Agathocles, Is deaf and visioned like thee.

Thou art so lithe and lovely And yet thou art not ours.

What Delphic saying compels thee Of kings or topless towers?

That little blowing mantle Thou losest from thine arm -- No shoon nor staff, Agathocles, Nor sword, to fend from harm!

Thou hast the changed impersonal Awed brow of mystery -- Yesterday thou wast burning, Mad boy, for Glaucoe.

Philis thy mother calls thee: Mine eyes with tears are dim, Turn once, look once, Agathocles -- (~The G.o.ds have blinded him.~)

Come back, Agathocles, the night -- Brings thee what place of rest?

Wine-sweet are Glaucoe's kisses, Flower-soft her budding breast.

He seems to hearken, Glaucoe, He seems to listen and smile; (~Nay, Philis, but a G.o.d-song He follows this many a mile.~)

Come back, come back, Agathocles!

(~He scents the asphodel; Unearthly swift he runneth.~) Agathocles, farewell!

To-Day. [Helen Gray Cone]

Voice, with what emulous fire thou singest free hearts of old fas.h.i.+on, English scorners of Spain, sweeping the blue sea-way, Sing me the daring of life for life, the magnanimous pa.s.sion Of man for man in the mean populous streets of To-day!

Hand, with what color and power thou couldst show, in the ring hot-sanded, Brown Bestiarius holding the lean tawn tiger at bay, Paint me the wrestle of Toil with the wild-beast Want, bare-handed; Shadow me forth a soul steadily facing To-day!

The Man with the Hoe. [Edwin Markham]

(Written after seeing Millet's world-famous painting)

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world.

Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?

Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?

Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?

Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

Is this the Thing the Lord G.o.d made and gave To have dominion over sea and land; To trace the stars and search the heavens for power; To feel the pa.s.sion of Eternity?

Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?

Down all the stretch of h.e.l.l to its last gulf There is no shape more terrible than this -- More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed -- More filled with signs and portents for the soul -- More fraught with menace to the universe.

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!

Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?

What the long reaches of the peaks of song, The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?