| |
| THEY in the darkness gather and ask | |
| Her name, the mistress of their endless task. | |
| |
The Toilers
Tinsel-makers in factory gloom, | |
| Miners in ethylene pits, | |
| Divers and druggists mixing poisonous bloom; | 5 |
| |
| Huge hunters, men of brawn, | |
| Half-naked creatures of the tropics, | |
| Furred trappers stealing forth at Labrador dawn; | |
| |
| Catchers of beetles, sheep-men in bleak sheds, | |
| Pearl-fishers perched on Indian coasts, | 10 |
| Children in stifling towers pulling threads; | |
| |
| Dark bunchy women pricking intricate laces, | |
| Myopic jewelers’ apprentices, | |
| Arabs who chase the long-legged birds in sandy places: | |
| |
| They are her invisible slaves, | 15 |
| The genii of her costly wishes, | |
| Climbing, descending, running under waves. | |
| |
| They strip earth’s dimmest cell, | |
| They burn and drown and stifle | |
| To build her inconceivable and fragile shell. | 20 |
| |
The Artist-Artisans
They have painted a miracle-shawl | |
| Of cobwebs and whispering shadows, | |
| And trellised leaves that ripple on a wall. | |
| |
| They have broidered a tissue of cost, | |
| Spun foam of the sea | 25 |
| And lilied imagery of the vanishing frost. | |
| |
| Her floating skirts have run | |
| Like iridescent marshes, | |
| Or like the tossed hair of a stormy sun. | |
| |
| Her silver cloak has shone | 30 |
| Blue as a mummy’s beads, | |
| Green as the ice-glints of an Arctic zone. * * * | |
| She is weary and has lain | |
| At last her body down. | |
| What, with her clothing’s beauty, they have slain! | 35 |
| |
The Angel With the Sword
Come, brothers, let us lift | |
| Her pitiful body on high, | |
| Her tight-shut hands that take to heaven no gift | |
| |
| But ashes of costly things. | |
| We seven archangels will | 40 |
| Bear her in silence on our flame-tipped wings. | |
| |
The Toilers
Lo, she is thinner than fire | |
| On a burned mill-town’s edge, | |
| And smaller than a young child’s dead desire. | |
| |
| Yea, emptier than the wage | 45 |
| Of a spent harlot crying for her beauty, | |
| And grayer than the mumbling lips of age. | |
| |
A Lost Girl
White as a drowned one’s feet | |
| Twined with the wet sea-bracken, | |
| And naked as a Sin driven from God’s littlest street. | 50 |
| |
