Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Fool

Horace Holley

HE was an angel luckless to be born

Into our darker world and dimmer plan.

Although he wore the body of a man

It looked like clothes at second hand, so worn

That worldlier people pushed him by in scorn.

Patient, he set his clock as our clocks ran

And faithfully each day its task began—

Night found him still beginning as at morn.

He lost his job. No foreman could forgive

The hand that built for dream and not for pay.

Try as he might, he came at last to naught—

A lonely statue crumbling day by day;

Which somehow woke an echo in our thought

Of life forgotten in the greed to live.