| |
| 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; | 5 |
| 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: | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
| |
| 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. | |
| |
| We shall search the sea again. | 25 |
| We shall search the stars again. | |
| There are no bars across the way. | |
| There is no end to the plan and the clue, | |
| the hunt and the thirst. | |
| The motors are drumming, the leather leggings | 30 |
| and the leather coats wait: | |
| Under the sea | |
| and out to the stars | |
| we go. | |
| |
