English

Brick walls built by Labor
Keep the sun away;
Towers wrought by Labor
Set cold winds at play;
Fires stoked by Labor
Make the sky dark gray;
So what is the good of
Labor anyway?

There is a scent on the books of dead men's bones,
And a spatter of blood over all;
There's a rough, ragged hole in each leaf you turn,
Like the wound from a rifleman's ball.

There's the last gasp of men shot down at command
Of this gracious and generous man;
There's the blood and groan, the grief and the sham—
You picture it, any who can.

There's a picture of Homestead—will we ever forget
How those brave ragged men were defenselessly slain—
Were slaughtered like beasts, like poor hunted beasts,

Little we know how it is, nothing we know of the why,
Simply we shuffle, the road leads to the end of the earth.
Everything kicks us. We learn, and those who quit learning must die,
But the learning is all of the road and unriddles no riddle of birth.

The stars in their courses may set, the stars in their courses may rise,
We look at them and say nothing, not knowing their why or ours;
Only sometimes we feel there is beauty in all those eyes
Whether that beauty mocks or blesses our ways and hours.

On the picket line
The morning starts with
A flaming mass of scorn and
Endurance;
With the parade of the humble and
Cops
With judicial assurance to
The big
Cheap buyers of life.

On the picket line
Peddlers sell red, ripe, sliced watermelon
And workers give their red blood free.
On the picket line policemen chew fleshy desires for live human steak.
On the picket line we can detect the buzzing of a bee and
The sneering of
A snake

On the picket line

Poet and Flute-player, that flute of thine
To me must ever seem thy perfect sign!
Tho' strenuously with breath divine inspired,
To thy strait law is due thy deathless line.

When snows the dead earth cumber
And weary Winter reigns
When streams in frozen slumber
Lie torpid in the plains;
Though all seems dead forever,
We know that nought can sever
Cold earth and rigid river
From Spring's awakening.

When trees are bare, and shining
With Winter's frozen breath,
The buds in their warm lining
Know 'tis but seeming death;
Know that not all his keenness,
Nor North Wind's hungry leanness
Can freeze their sleeping greenness
From waking in the spring.

A placed alone is but an idle worde.
E parce E, spells nothinge but it selfe;
I yet alone male lovely thoughtes afoorde:
but O, alas, dothe plaie the frowarde elfe:
to prove the Reason of this Riddle true:
not A nor E nor O, but I and yow.

Hail, puissant god, lord of all the gods,
The pillars of the world uprear thine hall;
Nations supply thy loaded table's feast
And thou, O pitiless, devourest all.
What meat thro' ages has not filled thy maw—
Brave glutton—sweeter for men's agonies?
O Mammon, thou hast many sacrifices
The smoke of thy altars overwhelms the skies.

The groan of starvelings and the sweat of toil,
Success and failure; centuries of strife;
Drink, death, disease, and every rottenness;
Joy, beauty, strength, the flower, the weed of life;

Tyme is but shorte, and shorte the course of tyme
Pleasures doe pas but as a puffe of wynde,
Care hath accompte to make for euery cryme
And peace abids but with the settled minde

Of litle paine doth pacience great proceede,
And after sickenes helthe is daintie sweete;
A frende is best approuèd at a neede,
And sweete the thought where care and kindnes meete

Then thinke what comfort dothe of kyndnes breede
To knowe thy sycknes sorrowe to thy frende;
And lett thy faithe vpon this favoure feede

Scene, final;
Setting, modern;
House, interior.
Left centre, window open to the west;
Right centre, swing door (showing some exterior
And eastern garden seats where one may rest).

Dramatis Personae,
Two wand'ring spirits
Who speak their lines, then flit across the stage,
Trusting the audience to applaud their merits,
Hoping their failures earn not failure's wage.

Enter
The ‘Gentle Reader’ with this paper—
Then, warning tinkle of the curtain-bell;
The footlights lower; something like a vapour