Part 48 (1/2)

Slave of the wheel of labour, 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?

Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop; Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, Plundered, profaned, and disinherited, Cries protest to the Judges of the World, A protest that is also prophecy.

O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give to G.o.d, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?

How will you ever straighten up this shape; Touch it again with immortality; Give back the upward looking and the light; Rebuild in it the music and the dream; Make right the immemorial infamies, Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands, How will the future reckon with this Man?

How answer his brute question in that hour When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?

How will it be with kingdoms and with kings-- With those who shaped him to the thing he is-- When this dumb Terror shall reply to G.o.d, After the silence of the centuries?

EDWIN MARKHAM.

SONG OF MYSELF.

”The Song of Myself” is one of Walt Whitman's (1819-92) most characteristic poems. I love the swing and the stride of his great long lines. I love his rough-shod way of trampling down and kicking out of the way the conventionalities that spring up like poisonous mushrooms to make the world a vast labyrinth of petty ”proprieties” until everything is nasty. I love the oxygen he pours on the world. I love his genius for brotherliness, his picture of the Negro with rolling eyes and the firelock in the corner. These excerpts are some of his best lines.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I a.s.sume you shall a.s.sume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer gra.s.s.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy.

Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?

Have you practised so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun (there are millions of suns left), You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

A child said, ”_What is the gra.s.s?_” fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or, I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrance designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name some way in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say, ”_Whose?_”