Is Prophetic Concerning Bo-peep in the New World .

Bo-peep was crying. Softly she complained,
" My thoughts, my well-beloved sheep, are lost;
And now I do not know
Where I may find them. High and low
I've searched, wind-blown and theory-tossed,
But they are gone, " she said.
... " I used to follow them where'er they led,
And never once disdained
To walk the queer and twisting paths they went;
Stumbling, but well content
I followed, bent
On learning Life no matter how it pained.
Now pulled by this new interest, now by that,
I leaped from dizzy rock to rock;
Thrilled by the shock
Of being swept and hurled
Into a new and deeper-breathing world.
Happy because I saw
Poems and pains and people in the raw;
Glad of the exquisite feeling that,
Touching the common things of earth,
I was a democrat.
And now, I see
How much my faith was worth.
My own emotions, frank and free,
Have, with a heartless, rude democracy,
Deserted me.
I have learned disillusion, to my cost —
And so I weep.
My thoughts, my well-beloved sheep,
Are lost. "

Then I replied:
" Bo-peep, look upward; do not be
A doubter of democracy.
Be lifted by a fresher, lowlier pride.
Fling wide
The glorious gates of your vast woman-soul;
And you shall find each thought,
Nobler and finer-wrought,
Eager to enter once again;
For you shall be their goal.
And then,
Like wanderers on a homeward track,
Beauty shall bring them back;
Bringing a thousand tales with them ...
Back to the broad expanse and breathless view;
To this placid forest's glittering hem, —
They shall come back to things they never knew;
Visions of men and dreams unfurled —
Back to a richer and more radiant world, —
And to you.