Page:The Poet in the Desert.djvu/37

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The dancer of the sky,

Who trips daintily down the distant mountain-side

Emptying her crystal chalice.

TRUTH: And a red-bird, dipped in sunrise, cracks from a poplar's

top His exultant whip above a silver world.

POET: Yet are my eyes afflicted by the coming of the day. I see like a mirage of the desert an endless procession

flowing from life unto death, Smileless, submissive; thin ghosts, starvation-carved. Life-marred, soul-stunted ; blurred unto death.

TRUTH: The army of the God of Gold.

POET: So pitiful-eager to snatch a crust that they may live ; To live, to work ; to work, to live.

TRUTH: Civilization !

POET: In the life-renewing Morning,

The stony dragons vomit their smoke into the face of God. The smoke of a hearth-stone is beautiful, But the smoke of furnaces, wherein are consumed The souls of men, is a blot against the luster of the day.

TRUTH: Civilization !

POET: I hear the hungry roar of fiery furnaces ; The clang of hammers and the clank of chains ;

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