II
For now at last, they have beheld the trees.
Lo, even these!—
The men of sounding laughter and low fears;
The women of light laughter, and no tears;
The great ones of the town.
And those, of most renown,
That once sold doves,—now grown so pennywise
To bargain with forlorner merchandise,—
They buy and sell, they buy and sell again,
The life-long toil of men.
Worn with their market strife to dispossess
The blind,—the fatherless,
They too go forth, to breathe of budding trees,
And woods with beckoning wonders new unfurled.
Yes, even these:
The money-changers and the Pharisees;
The rulers of the darkness of this world.
(O choiring Summer tree,
Bear yet awhile with me.)