The Project Gutenberg eBook, Labor and the Angel, by Duncan Campbell Scott

LABOR AND
THE ANGEL

DUNCAN CAMPBELL SCOTT

BOSTON

COPELAND AND DAY

M DCCC XCVIII

COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY COPELAND AND DAY

TO MY WIFE

In every heart the heart of spring

Bursts into leaf and bud;

The heart of love in every heart

Leaps with its eager flood.

Then hasten, rosy life, and lead

The Pilgrim to the door,

His sandals thonged for ministering,

His forehead bright with lore.

Oh, happy lovers, learn to serve,

And crown your state with power,

For Service is the peasant root,

And Love the princely flower.

CONTENTS.

LABOR AND THE ANGEL.

The wind plunges—then stops;

And a column of leaves in a whirl,

Like a dervish that spins—drops,

With a delicate rustle,

Falls into a circle that thins;

The leaves creep away one by one,

Hiding in hollows and ruts;

Silence comes down on the lane:

The light wheels slow from the sun,

And glints where the corn stood,

And strays over the plain,

Touching with patches of gold,

The knolls and the hollows,

Crosses the lane,

And slips into the wood;

Then flashes a mile away on the farm,

A moment of brightness fine;

Then the gold glimmers and wanes,

And is swept by a clouding of gray,

For cheek by jowl, arm in arm,

The shadow’s afoot with the shine.

The wind roars out from the elm,

Then leaps tiger-sudden;—the leaves

Shudder up into heaps and are caught

High as the branch where they hung

Over the oriole’s nest.

Down in the sodden field,

A blind man is gathering his roots,

Guided and led by a girl;

Her gold hair blows in the wind,

Her garments with flutter and furl

Leap like a flag in the sun;

And whenever he stoops, she stoops,

And they heap the dark colored beets

In the barrow, row upon row.

When it is full to the brim,

He wheels it patiently, slow,

Something oppressive and grim

Clothing his figure, but she

Beautifully light at his side,

Touches his arm with her hand,

Ready to help or to guide:

Power and comfort at need

In the flex of her figure lurk,

The fire at the heart of the deed

The angel that watches o’er work.

This is her visible form,

Heartening the labor she loves,

Keeping the breath of it warm,

Warm as a nestling of doves.

Humble or high or sublime,

Hers no reward of degrees,

Ditching as precious as rhyme,

If only the spirit be true.

“Effort and effort,” she cries,

“This is the heart-beat of life,

Up with the lark and the dew,

Still with the dew and the stars,

Feel it athrob in the earth.”

When labor is counselled by love,

You may see her splendid, serene,

Bending and brooding above,

With the justice and power of her mien

Where thought has its passionate birth,

Her smile is the sweetest renown,

For the stroke and the derring-do,

Her crown is the starriest crown.

When tears at the fountain are dry,

Bares she the round of her breast,

Soft to the cicatrized cheek,

Lulls this avatar of rest;

Strength is her arm for the weak;

Courage the wells of her eyes;

What is the power of their deeps,

Only the baffled can guess;

Nothing can daunt the emprise

When she sets hand to the hilt;

Victory is she—not less.

And oh! in the cages and dens

Where women work down to the bone,

Where men never laugh but they curse,

Think you she leaves them alone?

She the twin-sister of Love!

There, where the pressure is worst,

Of this hell-palace built to the skies

Upon hearts too crushed down to burst,

There, she is wiser than wise,

Giving no vistas sublime

Of towers in the murmurous air,

With gardens of pleasaunce and pride

Lulling the fleetness of time,

With doves alight by the side

Of a fountain that veils and drips;

She offers no tantalus-cup

To the shrunken, the desperate lips;

But she calms them with lethe and love,

And deadens the throb and the pain,

And evens the heart-beat wild,

Whispering again and again,

“Work on, work on, work on,

My broken, my agonized child,”

With her tremulous, dew-cool lips,

At the whorl of the tortured ear,

Till the cry is the presage of hope,

The trample of succor near.

And for those whose desperate day

Breeds night with a leaguer of fears,

(Night, that on earth brings the dew,

With stars at the window, and wind

In the maples, and rushes of balm,)

She pours from their limitless stores

Her sacred, ineffable tears.

When a soul too weary of life

Sets to its madness an end,

Then for a moment her eyes

Lighten, and thunder broods dark,

Heavy and strong at her heart;

But for a moment, and then

All her imperious wrath

Breaks in a passion of tears,

With the surge of her grief outpoured,

She sinks on the bosom of Love,

Her sister of infinite years,

And is wrapped, and enclosed, and restored.

So we have come with the breeze,

Up to the height of the hill,

Lost in the valley trees,

The old blind man and the girl;

But deep in the heart is the thrill

Of the image of counselling love;

The shape of the soul in the gloom,

And the power of the figure above,

Stand for the whole world’s need:

For labor is always blind,

Unless as the light of the deed

The angel is smiling behind.

Now on the height of the hill,

The wind is fallen to a breath;

But down in the valley still,

It stalks in the shadowy wood,

And angers the river’s breast;

The fields turn into the dark

That plays on the round of the sphere;

A star leaps sharp in the clear

Line of the sky, clear and cold;

But a cloud in the warmer west

Holds for a little its gold;

Like the wing of a seraph who sinks

Into antres afar from the earth,

Reluctant he flames on the brinks

Of the circles of nebulous stars,

Reluctant he turns to the rest,

From the planet whose ideal is love,

And then as he sweeps to the void

Vivid with tremulous light,

He gives it his translucent wing,

An emblem of pity unfurled,

Then falls to the uttermost ring,

And is lost to the world.

THE HARVEST.

Sun on the mountain,

Shade in the valley,

Ripple and lightness

Leaping along the world,

Sun, like a gold sword

Plucked from the scabbard,

Striking the wheat-fields,

Splendid and lusty,

Close-standing, full-headed,

Toppling with plenty;

Shade, like a buckler

Kindly and ample,

Sweeping the wheat-fields

Darkening and tossing;

There on the world-rim

Winds break and gather

Heaping the mist

For the pyre of the sunset;

And still as a shadow,

In the dim westward,

A cloud sloop of amethyst

Moored to the world

With cables of rain.

Acres of gold wheat

Stir in the sunshine,

Rounding the hill-top,

Crested with plenty,

Filling the valley,

Brimmed with abundance;

Wind in the wheat-field

Eddying and settling,

Swaying it, sweeping it,

Lifting the rich heads,

Tossing them soothingly;

Twinkle and shimmer

The lights and the shadowings,

Nimble as moonlight

Astir in the mere.

Laden with odors

Of peace and of plenty,

Soft comes the wind

From the ranks of the wheat-field,

Bearing a promise

Of harvest and sickle-time,

Opulent threshing-floors

Dusty and dim

With the whirl of the flail,

And wagons of bread,

Down-laden and lumbering

Through the gateways of cities.

When will the reapers

Strike in their sickles,

Bending and grasping,

Shearing and spreading;

When will the gleaners

Searching the stubble

Take the last wheat-heads

Home in their arms?

Ask not the question!—

Something tremendous

Moves to the answer.

Hunger and poverty

Heaped like the ocean

Welters and mutters,

Hold back the sickles!

Millions of children

Born to their terrible

Ancestral hunger,

Starved in their mothers’ womb,

Starved at the nipple, cry,—

Ours is the harvest!

Millions of women

Learned in the tragical

Secrets of poverty,

Sweated and beaten, cry,—

Hold back the sickles!

Millions of men

With a vestige of manhood,

Wild-eyed and gaunt-throated,

Shout with a leonine

Accent of anger,

Leave us the wheat-fields!

When will the reapers

Strike in their sickles?

Ask not the question;

Something tremendous

Moves to the answer.

Long have they sharpened

Their fiery, impetuous

Sickles of carnage,

Welded them æons

Ago in the mountains

Of suffering and anguish;

Hearts were their hammers

Blood was their fire,

Sorrow their anvil,

(Trusty the sickles

Tempered with tears;)

Time they had plenty—

Harvests and harvests

Passed them in agony,

Only a half-filled

Ear for their lot;

Man that had taken

God for a master

Made him a law,

Mocked him and cursed him,

Set up this hunger,

Called it necessity,

Put in the blameless mouth

Judas’s language:

The poor ye have with you

Alway, unending.

But up from the impotent