Your sleek hypocrisy in white cravat
May cheat your grocer on his office stool,
Your oily accents, plausible and cool,
May please your widowed tenant and her cat;
And pompous pride, in broadcloth, fed and fat,
May seem an oracle in Sunday school—
And yet I know you both for knave and fool;
So spare your grinning and put on your hat.

Eternity itself were scarce enough
To learn a true man's quality, were he
Still but the humblest of a peasant stripe;
But the poor tinsel of your proper stuff
I mark, established artist though you be,

To-night a word, a whisper,
Through long, long miles there thrills,
To you beside the river,
From one among the hills.

Above the town's sad turmoil
Your listening heart shall hear
The murmuring sound of alders,
The whispered word of cheer!

There are fifty million dollars in the room.
The splendid bellow of the barytone
Smites on a note to topple down a throne,
Mussorgsky boding forth an empire's doom.
There is lava in that song that can consume
Wild nations, and artillery's rhythmic drone,
Rebellion yelling, and wild trumpets blown,
And a blood-boltered Tsar dragged to the tomb.

So all the bare-backed women sigh applause,
Silk rustles, and the diamond collars glint,
And vacant eyes smile wide, as if no hint
Of horror hung upon the resonant air,

Better had I never known
Christ's word, the lifted stone,
Who now must face a second time
The darkness and the slime.

Better had my sisters prayed
Vainly for the young Lord's aid,
And never seen, as now they must,
Love throttled twice by dust.

Lord, they are sorry benisons
You lay upon your chosen ones,
That they alone beneath the sky
Must twice lose, and twice die.

Storm
Wild one,
Take me in your whirl,
In your giddy reel,
In your shot-like leaps and flights.
Hear me call—stop and hear.
I know you, blusterer; I know you, wild one—
I know your mysterious call.

We are here in a wood of little beeches;
And the leaves are like black lace
Against a sky of nacre.

One bough of clear promise
Across the moon.

It is in this wise that God speaketh unto me.
He layeth hands of healing upon my flesh,
Stilling it in an eternal peace;
Until my soul reaches out myriad and infinite hands
Toward him,
And is eased of its hunger.

And I know that this passes—
This implacable fury and torment of men—
As a thing insensate and vain.
And the stillness hath said unto me,
Over the tumult of sounds and shaken flame,

My step-grandfather sat during the noon spell
Against the wild crabapple tree, by the vines.
Flies about the high hot fern played, or fell
To his beard, or upon the big vein of his hand.
With their playing he seemed helpless and old, in a land
Where new stumps, piles of green brush, fresh-burnt pines,
Were young and stubborn. He mentioned the old times
As if he thought of this: “I have marched, and run
Over the old hills, old plowed land, with my gun
Bumping furrows—oh, years old. But in this new place
There is nothing I know. I ride a strange colt.”

O world that changes under my hand,
O brown world, bitter and bright,
And full of hidden recesses
Of love and light—

O world, what use would there be to me
Of power beyond power
To change, or establish new balance,
To build, or deflower?

O world, what use would there be?
Had I the Creator's fire,
I could not build you nearer
To my heart's desire!

Herald of earliest dawn! at thy smile the blue waters are stirring again:
Wide the sea wakes from its sleep, as thy bright eye enkindles the sky and the main.
As the wind flutters thy locks, and plays with the folds of thy many-dyed veil,
Boldly we launch on the deep, and deck with thy purple the snow of our sail.
Earth then gives tokens of life, and again, as a giant refreshed with repose,
Youthfully starts from its dreams, and its cheeks are all flushed with the bloom of the rose.

In sorrow and sadness
I'm destined to roam;
Distracted and forsaken I wander alone.
All the works of nature are hidden from my view.
The pleasures of life I must bid them adieu.

I hear the merry songs of the birds that are gay at dawn
Singing praises to God for the new day that is born;
How I long to behold them in their plumage so gay,
Alas it is all dark, for me there is no day.

I feel the gentle breezes that sweep over the field,
Bringing the fragrance of flowers that it doth yield.
Their sweet and fragrant odors how delicious to me,