him to the earth and knelt upon his breast

And listened till the fluttering pulse was stilled.
Man, god, or devil, I had wrenched the life from
him!

And lo!--even as he died
The moonlight failed above the vale,--
And somehow, sure, I know now how!--
Between the rifted rocks the great Sun struck
A finger down the cliff, and that red beam
Lay sharp across the face of him that I had slain;
And in that light I read the answer of the silent
gods
Unto my cursed-out prayer,
For he that lay upon the ground was--I!
I understood the lesson then;
It was myself that lay there dead;
Yes, I had slain my Self.

THE REBEL

No doubt the ordered worlds speed on
With purpose in their wings;
No doubt the ordered songs are sweet
Each worthy angel sings;
And doubtless it is wise to heed
The ordered words of Kings;

But how the heart leaps up to greet
The headlong, rebel flight,
Whenas some reckless meteor
Blazes across the night!
Some comet--Byron--Lucifer--
Has dared to Be, and fight!

No doubt but it is safe to dwell
Where ordered duties are;
No doubt the cherubs earn their wage
Who wind each ticking star;

No doubt the system is quite right!--
Sane, ordered, regular;

But how the rebel fires the soul
Who dares the strong gods' ire!
Each Byron!--Shelley!--Lucifer!--
And all the outcast choir
That chant when some Prometheus
Leaps up to steal Jove's fire!

THE CHILD AND THE MILL

BETTER a pauper, penniless, asleep on the kindly
sod--
Better a gipsy, houseless, but near to the heart
of God,

That beats for ears not dulled by the clanking
wheels of care--
Better starvation and freedom, hope and the good
fresh air

Than death to the Something in him that was
born to laugh and dream,
That was kin to the idle lilies and the ripples of
the stream.

For out of the dreams of childhood, that careless
come and go,
The boy gains strength, unknowing, that the Man
will prove and know.

But these fools with their lies and their dollars,
their mills and their bloody hands,
Who make a god of a wheel, who worship their
whirring bands,

They are flinging the life of a people, raw, to the
brute machines.
Dull-eyed, weary, and old--old in his early teens--

Stunted and stupid and twisted, marred in the