When Art goes bounding, lean,
Up hill-tops fired green
To pluck a rose for life.
Life like a broody hen
Cluck-clucks him back again.
But when Art, imbecile,
Sits old and chill
On sidings shaven clean,
And counts his clustering
Dead daisies on a string
With witless laughter….
Then like a new Jill
Toiling up a hill
Life scrambles after.
BROOKLYN BRIDGE
Pythoness body—arching
Over the night like an ecstasy—
I feel your coils tightening…
And the world's lessening breath.
DREAMS
Men die…
Dreams only change their houses.
They cannot be lined up against a wall
And quietly buried under ground,
And no more heard of…
However deep the pit and heaped the clay—
Like seedlings of old time
Hooding a sacred rose under the ice cap of the world—
Dreams will to light.
THE FIRE
The old men of the world have made a fire
To warm their trembling hands.
They poke the young men in.
The young men burn like withes.