LEATHER LEGGINGS
They have taken the ball of earth
- and made it a little thing.
They were held to the land and horses;
- they were held to the little seas.
They have changed and shaped and welded;
- they have broken the old tools and made
- new ones; they are ranging the white
- scarves of cloudland; they are bumping
- the sunken bells of the Carthaginians
- and Phœnicians:
- they are handling
- the strongest sea
- as a thing to be handled.
The earth was a call that mocked;
- it is belted with wires and meshed with
- steel; from Pittsburg to Vladivostok is
- an iron ride on a moving house; from
- Jerusalem to Tokyo is a reckoned span;
- and they talk at night in the storm and
- salt, the wind and the war.
They have counted the miles to the Sun
- and Canopus; they have weighed a small
- blue star that comes in the southeast
- corner of the sky on a foretold errand.
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