The glad golden year
Wheels slow in its coming.
Wild labor commotions
And murmurings for bread
While besotted with beer
Is the day's up-summing,—
Insurgent emotions
To beauty stone-dead!
What help, do you say,
For these sons of men?
In God's image they're made—
Cleanse their eyes to His light,
Tune their ears to His lay,
Give His bread once again
Whose price the Christ paid,—
Heaven's bread is their right!
Earth's means of achieving
(Herds, field-food, and river,
Rain-cisterns in sky,
And sunshine elysian)
Forever are weaving,
And fain would deliver,
Web of God's beauty nigh—
Sense-ravishing vision!
Sow bread in the field:
Warm rain will transfigure
The humble grey furrow
With a million pearl suns
On the lanceolate shield
Of emerald and ligure,
And the moon o'er each burrow
Of the low-buried ones
Turn silver the spear-tips
In the dusk, with her lips;
And when breezy morn's told,
All ripples in gold.
With envious repining
Or solace of delight—
As emotion is pure
Or turbid with ill—
Man views the outshining
From the heavenly height,
Feels the sweet picture's lure,
Hears the bird-copse athrill,
Makes him lord, or does not,
Of the park, house, or cot.
Who holds the sure key
To this largesse of treasure
Is a king among men,
Though a workman in blue,—
Of a strain yet to be
Who with God taketh pleasure
In the young earth again,
And feeleth it new.
Slow speeds the glad year
Told by poet and seer,
Yet I catch the far hum—
It will come, it will come!