THERE comes the time when he who gathers grapes
Must find his vineyard in the city street,
Must press what wine he may from lobate shapes
And globules clustered at his head and feet.
The press he treads will be the city night—
Bubble and bloom and burst of heady wine;
No fairer fresher grapes will meet his sight
Than pallid fruit of the electric vine!
There comes the time when he who longs for song
Must turn to monsters dreaming in the dark,
That Science-incubated aeons long;
Will give to music new heresiarch!
But Harmonies of pride and lust and doubt
Will greet the ear, that for some human hymn
Longs bitterly, hearing the brassy shout
Of engine songs, massive, superb and grim.
In those stark days new Lancelots shall pass
Accoutered black, with the bi-colored plume.
New Siegfrieds, armored in their steel and brass,
Shall flash subseas in tunnelled ocean gloom.
Woman and Science, gaunt with bold new brow,
Shall say what shall be born, what thing shall cry
Pioneer on its lurching, airdashed prow,
Air-immigrant to harbors of the sky.
There comes the day when on the sea of stars
Unspoken ships shall lay unsounded course,
And looming shapes, outside uncharted bars,
Shall dumbly signal with some speechless force.
New worlds shall stare on other worlds that be,
Sailing close by them on that starry sea,
And know that all the Main that round them rolls
Swells to new moons, new seas, new tides, new poles.
There comes the time, O patient Human heart,
O Brave Pathetic—time when thou must see
The old, the dear, the simple things depart,
Who canst not love the strange new things to be.
Yet by this New, shall not thy vision grow
To some estate, some altitude of range,
Where it is given thee that thou shalt know
What Changeless ’tis, that underlies all change?
THE TRAMP
THE ragged sun, the wind-filled sky,
The wet track and the empty car;
The night-hung woods, and, raised on high,
The lighted candle of a star.
So reads his heraldry, who prowls
On listless following of chance;
Who, sullenly appraising, scowls
On the rich dwelling’s circumstance.
The cloud of smoke upon the hill,
The rag left on the highway’s beat,
The light o’er a deserted sill—
These mark the passing of his feet.
No strenuous call of noontime bells
Vibrates through ether of his dreams;
For him no clock the hour tells;
For him no church’s spire gleams.