Grimy men with picks and shovels
Who in darkness sweat unseen,
Climb from out your lousy hovels,
Build a palace for the Queen;
Praise the powers that be for giving
You a chance to make a living.

Yet it would be better far
Could you build with cosy lure
Skyey tenements where are
Rabbit-warrens of the poor;
With a hope bright as a gem
Some day you might live in them.

Could the Queen just say: 'A score
Of rich palaces have I.
Do not make me any more,--
Raise a hostel heaven-high;

Oh, nobly shone the fearful cross upon your mail afar,
When Rhodes and Acre hailed your might, O lions of the war!
When leading many a pilgrim horde, through wastes of Syrian gloom;
Or standing with the cherub's sword before the holy tomb.
Yet on your forms the apron seemed a nobler armor far,
When by the sick man's bed ye stood, O lions of the war!
When ye, the high-born, bowed your pride to tend the lowly weakness,
The duty, though it brought no fame, fulfilled by Christian meekness--
Religion of the cross, thou blend'st, as in a single flower,

THAT way look, my Infant, lo!
What a pretty baby-show!
See the kitten on the wall,
Sporting with the leaves that fall,
Withered leaves---one---two---and three---
From the lofty elder-tree!
Through the calm and frosty air
Of this morning bright and fair,
Eddying round and round they sink
Softly, slowly: one might think,
From the motions that are made,
Every little leaf conveyed
Sylph or Faery hither tending,---
To this lower world descending,
Each invisible and mute,
In his wavering parachute.

Although I have a car of class,
A limousine,
I also have a jenny ass
I call Titine.
And if I had in sober sense
To choose between,
I know I'd give the preference
To sleek Titine.

My chauffeur drives my Cadillac
In uniform.
I wear a worn coat on my back
That he would scorn.
He speeds with umpty equine power,
Like an express;
I amble at eight miles an hour,
Or even less.

My wife can use our fancy bus
To cut a dash;

No not to-night, dear child; I cannot go;
I'm busy, tired; they knew I should not come;
you do not need me there. Dear, be content,
and take your pleasure; you shall tell me of it.
There, go to don your miracles of gauze,
and come and show yourself a great pink cloud.

So, she has gone with half a discontent;
but it will die before her curls are shaped,
and she'll go forth intent on being pleased,
and take her ponderous pastime like the rest--
patient delightedly, prepared to talk
in the right voice for the right length of time

And an astronomer said, "Master, what of Time?"

And he answered:

You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.

You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.

Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,

And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.

What of the hunting, hunter bold?
Brother, the watch was long and cold.
What of the quarry ye went to kill?
Brother, he crops in the jungle still.
Where is the power that made your pride?
Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.
Where is the haste that ye hurry by?
Brother, I go to my lair to die!

I was not aware of the moment
when I first crossed the threshold of this life.

What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery
like a bud in the forest at midnight!

When in the morning I looked upon the light
I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world,
that the inscrutable without name and form
had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother.

Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me.
And because I love this life,
I know I shall love death as well.

Three years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, "A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown;
This Child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine, and I will make
A Lady of my own.

"Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse: and with me
The Girl, in rock and plain
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power
To kindle or restrain.

"She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;
And her's shall be the breathing balm,

What wondrous noise is heard around!
Through heaven exulting voices sound,

A mighty army marches on
By thousand millions follow'd, lo,
To yon dark place makes haste to go

God's Son, descending from His throne!
He goes--the tempests round Him break,

As Judge and Hero cometh He;
He goes--the constellations quake,
The sun, the world quake fearfully.

I see Him in His victor-car,
On fiery axles borne afar,

Who on the cross for us expired.
The triumph to yon realms He shows,--
Remote from earth, where star ne'er glows,