They have shod thy feet with spikes and jointed thy dead knees

with iron,

And pushed thee hiding behind, to trample the poor dumb faces!

The spheres make music in space. They swing

Like fiery cherubim on their paths, circling their suns,

Mysterious, weaving the irrevealable,

Full of the peace of unity-sphere and its life at one— Humming their lives of love through the limitless waste of

creation.

God! thou hast made man a test of thyself!

Thou hast set in him a heart that bleeds at the cry of the

helpless:

Through Thine infinite seas one world rolls silent,

Moaning at times with quivers and fissures of blood;

Divided, unhappy, accursed; the lower life good,

But the higher life wasted and split, like grain with a cankered

root.

Is there health in thy gift of life, Almighty?

Is there grief or compassion anywhere for the poor?

If there be, there is guerdon for those who hate the wrong

And leap naked on the spears, that blood may cry

For truth to come, and pity, and Thy peace.

The human sea is frozen like a swamp; and the kings

And the heirs and the owners ride on the ice and laugh.

Their war-forces, orders, and laws are the crusted field of a

crater,

And they stamp on the fearful rind, deriding its flesh-like shudder.

Lightning! the air is split, the crater bursts, and the breathing Of those below is the fume and fire of hatred.

The thrones are stayed with the courage of shotted guns. The

warning dies.

But queens are dragged to the block, and the knife of the guillotine sinks

In the garbage of pampered flesh that gluts its bed and its hinges.

Silence again, and sunshine. The gaping lips are closed on the

crater.

The dead are below, and the landless, and those who live to

labor

And grind forever in gloom, that the privileged few may live.

But the silence is sullen, not restful. It heaves like a sea, and frets,

And beats at the roof till it finds another vent for its fury. Again the valve is burst and the pitch-cloud rushes-the old seam rends anew

Where the kings were killed before, their names are hewed from

the granite

Paris, mad hope of the slave-shops, flames to the pétroleuse! Tiger that tasted blood-Paris that tasted freedom!

Never, while steel is cheap and sharp, shall thy kinglings sleep

without dreaming

Never, while souls have flame, shall their palaces crush the hovels.

Insects and vermin, ye; the starving and dangerous myriads. List to the murmur that grows and growls! Come from your mines and mills,

Pale-faced girls and women with ragged and hard-eyed children,

Pour from your dens of toil and filth, out to the air of heavenBreathe it deep, and hearken! A cry from the cloud or

beyond it,

A cry to the toilers to rise, to be high as the highest that rules

them,

To own the earth in their lifetime and hand it down to their

children!

Emperors, stand to the bar! Chancellors, halt at the barracks! Landlords and Lawlords and Tradelords, the spectres you con

jured have risen

Communists, Socialists, Nihilists, Rent-rebels, strikers, behold! They are fruit of the seed you have sown-God has prospered

your planting. They come

From the earth, like the army of death. You have sowed the teeth of the dragon!

Hark to the bay of the leader! You shall hear the roar of the

pack

As sure as the stream goes seaward. The crust on the crater

beneath you

Shall crack and crumble and sink, with your laws and rules
That breed the million to toil for the luxury of the ten-
That grind the rent from the tiller's blood for drones to spend―
That hold the teeming planet as a garden plot for a thousand-
That draw the crowds to the cities from the healthful fields and

woods

That copulate with greed and beget disease and crime— That join these two and their offspring, till the world is filled with fear,

And falsehood wins from truth, and the vile and cunning succeed,

And manhood and love are dwarfed, and virtue and friendship

sick,

And the law of Christ is a cloak for the corpse that stands for

Justice!

-As sure as the Spirit of God is Truth, this Truth shall reign, And the trees and lowly brutes shall cease to be higher than men. God purifies slowly by peace, but urgently by fire.

JACQUEMINOTS.

I may not speak in words, dear, but let my words be flowers,
To tell their crimson secret in leaves of fragrant fire;
They plead for smiles and kisses as summer fields for showers,
And every purple veinlet thrills with exquisite desire.

O, let me see the glance, dear, the gleam of soft confession
You give my amorous roses for the tender hope they prove;
And press their heart-leaves back, love, to drink their deeper

passion,

For the sweetest, wildest perfume is the whisper of my love!

My roses, tell her, pleading, all the fondness and the sighing, All the longing of a heart that reaches thirsting for its bliss; And tell her, tell her, roses, that my lips and eyes are dying

For the melting of her love-look and the rapture of her kiss.

There is no vacant chair. The loving meet—
A group unbroken-smitten, who knows how?

One sitteth silent only, in his usual seat;

We gave him once that freedom. Why not now?

Perhaps he is too weary, and needs rest;

He needed it too often, nor could we

Bestow. God gave it, knowing how to do so best.
Which of us would disturb him? Let him be.

There is no vacant chair. If he will take

The mood to listen mutely, be it done.

By his least mood we crossed, for which the heart must ache, Plead not nor question! Let him have this one.

Death is a mood of life. It is no whim

By which life's Giver mocks a broken heart. Death is life's reticence. Still audible to Him,

The hushed voice, happy, speaketh on, apart. \

There is no vacant chair. To love is still

To have. Nearer to memory than to eye. And dearer yet to anguish than to comfort, will We hold him by our love, that shall not die.