| Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22. | | | | Come down, Walt! | | By John Russell McCarthy |
| | | WALT! Walt! | |
| You burly old lover of men and women, | |
| You hairy shouter of catalogues from the housetops, | |
| Earth’s prophet, through whom the Almighty chanted His works— | |
| Walt! Walt! Up there! Do you hear us hallooing to you? | 5 |
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| Out of stinking alleys, | |
| Out of gutters and dead fields, | |
| Out of the eternal monotony of the factories, | |
| From all abominable trades and places, | |
| Swarms an egregious horde: | 10 |
| Speaking all tongues they come, | |
| Singing new songs, and loving and praying, | |
| And mauling and being mauled; | |
| And pushed down under the slime and bursting out to the heavens. | |
| We do not know them. | 15 |
| We futile men in white collars do not know them. | |
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| Walt! Walt!— | |
| You burly old lover of men and women— | |
| Can’t you get a furlough? | |
| Stop shouting above the noise of the harps, | 20 |
| Loose your arm from Abe Lincoln’s | |
| And come down. | |
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| Eat with this horde, Walt, | |
| And laugh with them | |
| And weep with them! | 25 |
| Then come forth chanting, | |
| You prophet and diviner, | |
| You lover and seer of men: | |
| Find for us the perfume of their stench, | |
| Shout forth the beauty of their dreams, | 30 |
| Translate their hundred tongues. | |
| Come, Walt! Come! | | | | |
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