of the rain,
The heart of April beats again.

Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul:
O Gentle Master of the Wise
Teach us to say, "I will arise."

BALLAD OF THE SEVEN O'CLOCK WHISTLE

The daisied dawn is in the sky,
And the young day still dew and dream,
When on the innocent morning air
There comes a terrifying scream;

And the four ends of the sad earth
Repeat the hellish dreadful call;
Soft ladies murmur in soft beds--
"The morning whistle--that is all!"

And I too turn to sleep once more,
A haunted sleep all filled with pain;
For in my sleep I see the men,
The victims of colossal Gain,

Troop in the doors of servitude;
I see the children weary-eyed,
I see the time-clock, and I see
The endless day that glooms inside.

It is the Moloch of the dawn,
Capital calling for its prey--
Men, women and little boys and girls,
It's human sacrifice each day.

And, as I hear that dreadful scream,
High in the dawn all filled with song,--
I pray within my aching heart--"O Lord!
O Lord! How long! How long!"

MORALITY

Give me the lifted skirt,
And the brave ways of wrong,
The fist, the dagger and the sword,
And the out-spoken song.

Ah! bring me not the love
That bargains, bids and buys:
For so much loving I will give
So much in lips and eyes;

But love with bosom bared,
Sweet as a bird and wild,
That in her savage maidenhood
Cries for a little child.

VI

FOR THE BIRTHDAY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE

(January 19, 1909)

Poet of doom, dementia, and death,
Of beauty singing in a charnel house,
Like the lost soul of a poor moon-mad maid,
With too much loving of some lord of hell;
Doomed and disastrous spirit, to what shore
Of what dark gulf infernal art thou strayed,
Or to what spectral star of topless heaven
Art lifted and enthroned?

The winter dark,
And the drear winter cold that welcomed thee
To a world all winter, gird with ice and storm
Thy January day--yea! the same world
Of winter and the wintry hearts of men;
And still, for all thy shining, the same swarm
That mocked thy song gather about thy fame,
With the small murmur of the undying worm,
And whisper, blind and foul, amid thy dust.

TO RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Poet, whose words are like the tight-packed seed
Sealed in the capsule of a silver flower,
Still at your art we wonder as we read,