  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! |
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