Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns And marked their ways upon the ancient deep? Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf

There is no shape more terrible than this—

More tongued with censure of the world's blind greedMore filled with signs and portents for the soulMore 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?
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 God,

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 God,

After the silence of the centuries?

Edwin Markham [1852

THE MAN WITH THE HOE

A REPLY

Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way: she better understands her own affairs than we.-MONTAIGNE

NATURE reads not our labels, "great" and "small";
Accepts she one and all

Who, striving, win and hold the vacant place;

All are of royal race.

Him, there, rough-cast, with rigid arm and limb,
The Mother molded him,

Of his rude realm ruler and demigod,

Lord of the rock and clod.

With Nature is no "better" and no "worse,"

On this bared head no curse.

Humbled it is and bowed; so is he crowned
Whose kingdom is the ground.

Diverse the burdens on the one stern road

Where bears each back its load;

Varied the toil, but neither high nor low.

With pen or sword or hoe,

He that has put out strength, lo, he is strong;

Of him with spade or song

Nature but questions,-"This one, shall he stay?"

She answers "Yea," or "Nay,"

"Well, ill, he digs, he sings"; and he bides on,
Or shudders, and is gone.

Strength shall he have, the toiler, strength and grace,
So fitted to his place

As he leaned, there, an oak where sea winds blow, Our brother with the hoe.

No blot, no monster, no unsightly thing,

The soil's long-lineaged king;

His changeless realm, he knows it and commands; Erect enough he stands,

Tall as his toil. Nor does he bow unblest:

Labor he has, and rest.

Need was, need is, and need will ever be

For him and such as he;

Cast for the gap, with gnarlèd arm and limb,

The Mother molded him,

Long wrought, and molded him with mother's care, Before she set him there.

And aye she gives him, mindful of her own,
Peace of the plant, the stone;

Yea, since above his work he may not rise,

She makes the field his skies.

See! she that bore him, and metes out the lot,
He serves her. Vex him not

To scorn the rock whence he was hewn, the pit
And what was digged from it;

Lest he no more in native virtue stand,

The earth-sword in his hand,

But follow sorry phantoms to and fro,

And let a kingdom go.

John Vance Cheney [1848

AULD LANG SYNE

SHOULD auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min'?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And days o' lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne,

We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae rin about the braes,
And pu'd the gowans fine;

But we've wandered monie a weary fit

Sin' auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl't i' the burn,

Frae mornin' sun till dine;

But seas between us braid hae roared

Sin' auld lang syne.

And here's a hand, my trusty fiere,

And gie's a hand o' thine;

And we'll tak a right guid willie-waught

For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp,

And surely I'll be mine,

And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet

For auld lang syne!

Robert Burns [1759-1796]

THE MUSIC-MAKERS

ISRAFEL

And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God's creatures.-KORAN

IN Heaven a spirit doth dwell
Whose heart-strings are a lute;
None sing so wildly well

As the angel Israfel,

And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.

Tottering above

In her highest noon,

The enamoured moon

Blushes with love,

While, to listen, the red levin

(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven)

Pauses in Heaven.

And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire

Is owing to that lyre

By which he sits and sings,
The trembling living wire

Of those unusual strings.

But the skies that angel trod,

Where deep thoughts are a duty,

Where Love's a grown-up God,

Where the Houri glances are

Imbued with all the beauty

Which we worship in a star.