CE more this Autumn-earth is ripe, Parturient of another type. While with the Past old nations merge His foot is on the Future’s verge. They watch him, as they huddle, pent, Striding a spacious continent, Above the level desert’s marge Looming in his aloofness large. No flower with fragile sweetness graced— A lank weed wrestling with the waste; Pallid of face and gaunt of limb, The sweetness withered out of him; Sombre, indomitable, wan, The juices dried, the glad youth gone. A little weary from his birth, His laugh the spectre of a mirth, Bitter beneath a bitter sky, To Nature he has no reply. Wanton, perhaps, and cruel.
Yes, Is not his sun more merciless? So drab and neutral is his day, He finds a splendour in the grey, And from his life’s monotony He draws a dreary melody. When earth so poor a banquet makes His pleasures at a gulp he takes; The feast is his to the last crumb: Drink while he can…the drought will come. His heart a sudden tropic flower, He loves and loathes within an hour. Yet you who by the pools abide, Judge not the man who swerves aside; He sees beyond your hazy fears; He roads the desert of the years; Rearing his cities in the sand, He builds where even God has banned; With green a continent he crowns, And stars a wilderness with towns; With paths the distances he snares; His gyves of steel the great plain wears. A child who takes a world for toy, To build a nation or destroy, His childish features frozen stern, His manhood’s task he has to learn— From feeble tribes to federate One white and peace-encompassed State. But if there be no goal to reach?… The track lies open, dawns beseech! Enough that he lay down his load A little farther on the road. So, toward undreamt-of destinies He slouches down the centuries.
