I heard, as still the seed he cast,
How, crooning to himself, he sung.
'I sow again the holy Past,
The happy days when I was young.
'Then all was wheat without a tare,
Then all was righteous, fair, and true;
And I am he whose thoughtful care
Shall plant the Old World in the New.
'The fruitful germs I scatter free,
With busy hand, while all men sleep;
In Europe now, from sea to sea,
The nations bless me as they reap.'
Then I looked back along his path.
And heard the clash of steel on steel,
Where man faced man, in deadly wrath,
While clanged the tocsin's hurrying peal.
The sky with burning towns flared red,
Nearer the noise of fighting rolled.
And brothers' blood, by brothers shed,
Crept curdling over pavements cold.
Then marked I how each germ of truth
Which through the dotard's fingers ran
Was mated with a dragon's tooth
Whence there sprang up an armèd man.
I shouted, but he could not hear;
Made signs, but these he could not see;
And still, without a doubt or fear,
Broadcast he scattered anarchy.
Long to my straining ears the blast
Brought faintly back the words he sung:
'I sow again the holy Past,
The happy days when I was young.'
HUNGER AND COLD
Sisters two, all praise to you,
With your faces pinched and blue;
To the poor man you've been true
From of old:
You can speak the keenest word,
You are sure of being heard,
From the point you're never stirred,
Hunger and Cold!