d brood,--
Unbudding sentiencies of flowerhood,
Shut miracles no wand
May touch, that from the hand
Of Toil, the reaver, fall
To dust, their grudged pall,
Leaving imperial web to those who wear
That woof of blood and tears as gossamer.

Not then! Where now the wailing way o'erteems,
And baffled starvelings bar
The way of dreams;
Pouring to Want, grey-veined Disease,
To Greed, and lurking War,--
Brute goblinries
With horde-lip sateless on
God-food dust-thrown,--
Lover and Love shall pass, each babe of theirs,
Darling of Life, born for the higher wars
Where knights of spirit sway,
Summoned to holiest fray
By heralds never bare
To clodded vision. There,
Shriven and sure, the sun-dipped lance shall leap
Till Dream uncorselet clay and put off sleep.

For me one rift! Through this sepultural blight
A breath runs living, new;
Unburdening light
As when the flame-borne prophet on
The Syrian ploughman threw
A people's dawn.
The world is Heaven worth,
The cradle earth
Casts orphanhood, a Bethlehem God-swung
From crimson grapple with his lyric young.
Here triumph I, so low,
Knowing that Lust shall go,
With whited, anarch train,--
Shall pass, this curbless, vain
Usurping deity that would compel
The Mary-longing Love to yet mould Jezebel.

Drag me with life that keeps Death shadow-near
Till I, unfrighted, wake
His charnel fear
In every face that wariful
Meets mine; this bud-mouth make
Unkissable
With kisses; and up-lap
My soul's youth sap
Till 't withers to a clutch about the gold
You think pays all; yet from this reedy mould,
This swamped, unfructant sedge,
Gentility's marsh edge,
I, on free wing, shall take
My swan-course o'er the brake,
Leaving the chanson of thy sin to thee
Who hast not seen, not touched the unstainable me.

Yet art thou dear, O singer! When we rest
Past all Life's hostel doors,
On her home crest;
And 'neath our feet the dark vat night
From pain's crushed star-grapes pours
The climbing light;
There thou, beside me then,
With moteless ken,
Reme