Oily and black is my face, I know,
Fire-bleared and sullen am I;
Blood-streaks of ore-dust scar me and show
Where a long barge has gone by.
Yet I reflect many houses of toil
Where the world's work is forged through;
Where flames and muscle bring metal to boil
While Trade is waiting the brew.
No sunset sends its long shadows of gold
Over my dingy old face;
Only a smoke-streaked glow makes bold,
Lighting the driftwood space.
White-coated craft keep aloof from my rush,
Pleasure craft, modish and trim
As dainty women who shrink when they brush
Workmen's coats, rusty and dim.
Yes, I am homely, oily am I,
Hideous, sullen, and bleared,
Yet I have answered my laborer's cry—
Not yet is my conscience seared.

WAYSIDE AND HIGHWAY IN AUTUMN

There they stand, the flowering rods,
Rods of sunshine that are God's,
Captive sunshine held at bay
While the autumn wears away,
Promise of a coming day
When new flowers shall blow that way.
There they stand, the blackening stacks,
Stacks all charred with browns and blacks
Like a nest of black-scaled snakes,
From whose jaws which nothing slakes
Jaggèd tongues of hungry flame
Leap through darkness none dare name;
Burning night, devouring dark,
Hissing, reeling, spewing spark,
Breathing smokes that writhe and twist,
Taunting all that dares exist.
Yet this nest of fiendish flame—
Brood all-worthy Satan's name—
Rises up from God's own mills,
His as much as all the hills,
Where they stand, the flowering rods,
Rods of sunshine, held at bay
While the autumn wears away.

SNUFFED OUT

One day a Toiler walking home among a crowd of men
At sunset viewed a wondrous sight, and called the Other Ten:
“An artist has been here to-day since we went in the mill;
He's made the housetops all aflame, and every window sill
Is shining round the burning glass that glows with brands of fire;
His brush has left a crimson sky and colored every spire;
The grass is painted brighter green, and every dusty leaf
That silent hangs upon the tree is sketched in bold relief.”
“Just hear poor Dan; he's raving mad,” called out the Other Ten.
“We'll see him home, he's gone, all right, he'll not be back again.”
And then they laughed full hideously, and mocking, jeered at him,
Till pale he grew, and scarlet turned, then, as before, was grim:
The Other Ten, whose dusty coats encased ten dusty souls,
Had snuffed the kindling flame of light with jeers and coarse cajoles.
O busy men of mart and mill, O men of shop and street,
May never you their sin commit when you some brother meet
Who, having seen a spark from God, tells forth the wondrous sight,
But finds the soul snatched from his words, and from his spark, the light.

AN INTERRUPTED WORKER'S REVELATION

O God, I thank Thee for the drenching rain
That beats against my office windowpane
And breaks my self-content.
The lightning's virile slash and crackling spark,
That glorify the clouds though earth be dark,
Remind me there is something still
Which can't be ordered by my master will.
O lightnings uncontrollable
And waters uncommandable,
I thank thee that thou badst me leave my task
And taught me how to tear away my mask,
To see that God, the Master, still presides
And keeps some secrets yet, whose home He hides.