Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Massachusetts Poets. 1922.

The Worlds

I SAW an idler on a summer day

Piping with Iris by a dancing brook;

And all his world was rife with Pleasures gay,

And languid Follies smiled from every nook.

I saw an artist in a world of dreams,

His rainbow rising from his radiant task,

To throw its magic prism beams

O’er Fancy’s changeful masque and counter-masque.

I saw Toil—stooping underneath a world

Whereon his foster-brothers lighter tread,

His skyward pinions ever closer furled

Before the grim necessity of bread!

I saw a sinner working hard to be

Worthy his death-wage from the mint of time;

I saw a sailor, unto whom the sea

Was hearth and hope and love and wedding-chime.

I saw a mother living in her child—

I saw a saint among his fellow men—

Brave soldiery before my eyes defiled

And solemn-hearted scholars—Sudden then

I cried: “The stars are no less neighborly

In their ethereal remoteness swung,

Than these near human orbits wherein we

Live out our lives and speak our chosen tongue!

“Love seek through all—less there be one

Least soul unlit within the night—

And over all, the selfsame sun

Give each creation light!”