1923
Well, here we are, Mother—
Atoms, electrons
Afloat in this vast universe—
Going to town in a motor-car
Absurdly driven by exploding little drops of oil;
Going to town to send a cable to China—
“Congratulations, love”—
Because a baby, your grandchild,
Was born today in Peking!
A tiny baby,
Heiress of all the ages, of this age
Inexplicable!
Azenath, great-great-granddaughter of Azenath
The Puritan,
Great-granddaughter of Azenath the pioneer.
Queer!
Born in Peking,
To grow up in Russia perhaps,
And vote in Chicago,
And marry in Caracas!
Her father cutting railroads through Asia,
Stringing the Orient to the modern world
With little lines of steel.
She'll feel
Outdistanced, beaten by magnitudes.
Already the walls are down—
Fences, state lines,
Castle walls,
Harem walls.
We are out in the glare,
We face
Space;
Each little spark of life measuring by millions—
Millions of people, millions of stars.
Today
No neighbors in prim array
Of class, religion, fortune;
But crowds, but masses,
Surging from under,
Hurling from over,
Shouting across gulfs,
Across oceans,
Across centuries.
Informed from everywhere so,
What can we know?
Through noise how can we hear?
Queer!
What other errands in town?
We must get a tire.
The Congo must send us rubber—
Let us hope it costs no lives
As in good King Leopold's day!
Manila will offer hemp,
Alabama cotton,
Pittsburgh the bits of metal.
How many brains have planned it, I wonder—
Invented each valve and screw, each cord and tread,
Serving me, ignorant, these many years
Since Good year put the sulphur
Into his first black sticky brew?
He thought of me—he knew! …
And see—we must order
Oranges from Arizona,
Sugar from Cuba,
And avocado pears—the satin fruit—
From Panama;
Beef also from Texas, or maybe Argentina—
Tomorrow it will be reindeer from Alaska!
How many hands,
In how many lands,
Have grown and harvested and transported and made
The dinner we shall nibble at daintily
Under the shaded candles!
Black hands, yellow hands,
Hands brown and hard,
White hands, perhaps of children:
Hands that have never touched us,
Steel-cold fingers of the implacable, ceaseless
Engine of civilization;
Moving for whom they know not,
Making they scarcely know what detail of the whole,
Grasping their pay from the engine's clutch
At the end of the forty-four hours, the forty-eight, sixty—
The week's-end of their labor;
Or throwing down their tools,
Stopping the engine,
If it goes too fiercely
And yields them too little of its plunder—
Its heaped-up wealth of the world.
When I think of it all I fear—
Queer!
I fear
Not only because this devilish god-like power
Of massed and ordered men
Turns into fury
Whenever some autocrat—
Imperial, proletarian—
Shouts a proud “I!”
And waves a patterned rag;
Fury that reddens
The green earth, flowered with homes,
And the blue ship-bearing sea,
Till hundreds of people, thousands,
An hundred millions maybe,
Lie ashen and bloodless:
I fear not only War—
War may even cease!—
But Peace.
I fear for the human spirit left alone
In vastness—
Alone with too much knowledge
That obliterates God,
Alone with too much power
That separates souls;
Alone in crowds,
Crowds huge beyond reach of a leader,
Crowds moving back and forth,
Shouting this cry or that;
Crowds laboring, loving, hating—
They know not what nor why,
Spending their passion for confusion and sorrow,
Till it goes to bitter seed,
And sows
Greed.
I fear for him, for her—
The human atom
Caught in the immense, the incomprehensible drift.
His little gods were arrogant—
We struck them down,
And spread great Nature's ribald book of truth
Before his half-reading eyes,
His docile half-comprehending mind.
His little tools were weak,
Too easily used and loved—
We threw them away
And gave him the machine.
His little world
Too small was, too cosy and friendly and close—
We invaded it with trains and telephones,
Newspapers, immigrants,
With unions, movements,
With dreams and new ideas.
What have we given him,
Poor underling—
More under than ever, more impotent—
To pay
For all we took away?
Will such as he
Win free?
Will the crowd make us over?
Will some Man of the crowd,
Some seer and lover,
Lift this mess of a world—
This boiling cauldron—
From the ancient abominable fires,
And set it to cool in the winds of Time,
And mold it to beauty again,
And swing it high
To its path of joy
Sublime?
Little baby Azenath, will you see
A world set free?—
Free of the rich,
Free of the poor;
Free of the idle and the toil-enslaved;
Free of the ignorant and the over-knowing?
A world aware of its road,
Sure of its goal,
Moving grandly along
With a song?
It might be done,
Little one!
There is power enough, light enough, wealth enough—
If we work together,
And waste not,
Haste not.
Is there love enough,
Little one?
Well, here we are in town—
Let me down.
I'll start the cable on its copper path—
“Congratulations—love.”
Poor innocent Azenath!
Atoms, electrons
Afloat in this vast universe—
Going to town in a motor-car
Absurdly driven by exploding little drops of oil;
Going to town to send a cable to China—
“Congratulations, love”—
Because a baby, your grandchild,
Was born today in Peking!
A tiny baby,
Heiress of all the ages, of this age
Inexplicable!
Azenath, great-great-granddaughter of Azenath
The Puritan,
Great-granddaughter of Azenath the pioneer.
Queer!
Born in Peking,
To grow up in Russia perhaps,
And vote in Chicago,
And marry in Caracas!
Her father cutting railroads through Asia,
Stringing the Orient to the modern world
With little lines of steel.
She'll feel
Outdistanced, beaten by magnitudes.
Already the walls are down—
Fences, state lines,
Castle walls,
Harem walls.
We are out in the glare,
We face
Space;
Each little spark of life measuring by millions—
Millions of people, millions of stars.
Today
No neighbors in prim array
Of class, religion, fortune;
But crowds, but masses,
Surging from under,
Hurling from over,
Shouting across gulfs,
Across oceans,
Across centuries.
Informed from everywhere so,
What can we know?
Through noise how can we hear?
Queer!
What other errands in town?
We must get a tire.
The Congo must send us rubber—
Let us hope it costs no lives
As in good King Leopold's day!
Manila will offer hemp,
Alabama cotton,
Pittsburgh the bits of metal.
How many brains have planned it, I wonder—
Invented each valve and screw, each cord and tread,
Serving me, ignorant, these many years
Since Good year put the sulphur
Into his first black sticky brew?
He thought of me—he knew! …
And see—we must order
Oranges from Arizona,
Sugar from Cuba,
And avocado pears—the satin fruit—
From Panama;
Beef also from Texas, or maybe Argentina—
Tomorrow it will be reindeer from Alaska!
How many hands,
In how many lands,
Have grown and harvested and transported and made
The dinner we shall nibble at daintily
Under the shaded candles!
Black hands, yellow hands,
Hands brown and hard,
White hands, perhaps of children:
Hands that have never touched us,
Steel-cold fingers of the implacable, ceaseless
Engine of civilization;
Moving for whom they know not,
Making they scarcely know what detail of the whole,
Grasping their pay from the engine's clutch
At the end of the forty-four hours, the forty-eight, sixty—
The week's-end of their labor;
Or throwing down their tools,
Stopping the engine,
If it goes too fiercely
And yields them too little of its plunder—
Its heaped-up wealth of the world.
When I think of it all I fear—
Queer!
I fear
Not only because this devilish god-like power
Of massed and ordered men
Turns into fury
Whenever some autocrat—
Imperial, proletarian—
Shouts a proud “I!”
And waves a patterned rag;
Fury that reddens
The green earth, flowered with homes,
And the blue ship-bearing sea,
Till hundreds of people, thousands,
An hundred millions maybe,
Lie ashen and bloodless:
I fear not only War—
War may even cease!—
But Peace.
I fear for the human spirit left alone
In vastness—
Alone with too much knowledge
That obliterates God,
Alone with too much power
That separates souls;
Alone in crowds,
Crowds huge beyond reach of a leader,
Crowds moving back and forth,
Shouting this cry or that;
Crowds laboring, loving, hating—
They know not what nor why,
Spending their passion for confusion and sorrow,
Till it goes to bitter seed,
And sows
Greed.
I fear for him, for her—
The human atom
Caught in the immense, the incomprehensible drift.
His little gods were arrogant—
We struck them down,
And spread great Nature's ribald book of truth
Before his half-reading eyes,
His docile half-comprehending mind.
His little tools were weak,
Too easily used and loved—
We threw them away
And gave him the machine.
His little world
Too small was, too cosy and friendly and close—
We invaded it with trains and telephones,
Newspapers, immigrants,
With unions, movements,
With dreams and new ideas.
What have we given him,
Poor underling—
More under than ever, more impotent—
To pay
For all we took away?
Will such as he
Win free?
Will the crowd make us over?
Will some Man of the crowd,
Some seer and lover,
Lift this mess of a world—
This boiling cauldron—
From the ancient abominable fires,
And set it to cool in the winds of Time,
And mold it to beauty again,
And swing it high
To its path of joy
Sublime?
Little baby Azenath, will you see
A world set free?—
Free of the rich,
Free of the poor;
Free of the idle and the toil-enslaved;
Free of the ignorant and the over-knowing?
A world aware of its road,
Sure of its goal,
Moving grandly along
With a song?
It might be done,
Little one!
There is power enough, light enough, wealth enough—
If we work together,
And waste not,
Haste not.
Is there love enough,
Little one?
Well, here we are in town—
Let me down.
I'll start the cable on its copper path—
“Congratulations—love.”
Poor innocent Azenath!
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