I. I dreamed a mighty dream. It seemed mine eyesSealed for the moment were to things terrene,And then there came a strange, great wind that blewFrom undiscovered lands, and took my soulAnd set it on an uttermost peak of HellAmid the gloom and fearful silences.Slowly the darkness paled, and a weird dawnBroke on my wondering […]

They were three old men with hoary hairAnd beards of wintry gray,And they digged a grave in the yellow soil,And they crooned this song as they plied their toil,In the fading light of day: Hither ye bring your workmen,Like tools that are broken and bent,To pay your due to their cunningAfter their skill is spent;Hither […]

Earthquake. I am a memory of cosmogony,That first great hour of travail when the voiceOf God called suns and systems from the void;I am the dream He dreams of that last dayWhen mountains by the roots shall be plucked upAnd headlong flung into the raging sea! Hurricane. I am the breath that fills the organ […]

God let me fall from His handOne day at His forge when the elemental worldWas shaping. I am but a breath from His great bellows,But here among the workshops of mankindI am a fateful scourge. I tear red strips from the proud cities of men;I name my passage the Highway of Instant Death;I splinter world-old […]

The city frets in the distance, lass,The city so grim and gray,A glare in the sky by night, my lass,And a blot on the sky by day;But we are out on the long white road,And under the wide free sky,And the song that was born in my heart todayWill sing there till I die. The […]

Here is the freedom men die for,–die for but never know;Here is the peace they pray for shrined in eternal snow;Down on the plain the city moans with a human cry,But here there is naught but silence,–peace, and the wide, wide sky. Here are the dawn’s first footfalls, and the twilight’s last farewell,The benediction of […]

Behold! I cover up this trail of tearsA moment’s weakness left upon my cheek,And hush my heart a little ere I speakLest the false note ring true on other ears;The music rises and the empty cheersProclaim the harlequin, and lo! I standThe painted fool again and kiss my handWith jocund air to Folly’s worshippers.So day […]

The dial has pointed the hour and the hour has rounded the day,The day has finished the year that dies with a century’s birth;Eastward the morning stars sing as they go their way:“Lo! the Great Mother travaileth, a king is born to the earth!King of a hundred years, and king of a million tombs,Sovereign of […]

The eyrie clung to the shattered cliffThat the glacier’s torrent thundered under;And the unfledged eaglet’s lifted eyeLooked out on the world of peak and skyIn silent wonder. The mountain daisy, dainty white,That grew by the side of the lofty eyrie,Saw the young wings beat on the eagle’s breast,And the restless eyes in the fagot-nestGrow grim […]

Lucifer craved one boon of GodAfter his fall, as his own to hold;So He gave him a mite in heaven’s sight,But lo! the gift that He gave was–Gold. And Lucifer wrought with the rugged oreTill he fashioned it wondrous fair, and thenHe set a price on the precious store,And the price was the blood and […]

Down at the end of the iron laneI see the sunset’s glare,And the red bars lie across the skyLike steps of a wondrous stair. Below, the throng, with unlifted eye,Sweeps on in its heedless flightWhere the street’s black funnel pours its tideOut into the deepening night. And no one has stopped to read God’s wordOn […]

I. The light of a new day was on his brow,The faith of a great dawn was on his tongue;Out of the dark he raised his voice and sungThe high Messiah who should overthrowThe gods that Superstition crowned with mightAnd set above the world,–the coming ChristWhose unshed blood should be the holy tryst‘Twixt man and […]

The poet painted a woman’s soul,Human, trusting and kind,And then he drew the soul of a man,Brutal and base and blind; And the woman loved in the old, old way,And the man in the way of men,And the poet christened their lives “A Play,”And he sat down to watch it, and then … A woman […]

He crouches, voiceless, in his tomb-like cell,Forgot of all things save his jailer’s hateThat turns the daylight from his iron grateTo make his prison more and more a hell;For him no coming day or hour shall spellDeliverance, or bid his soul awaitThe hand of Mercy at his dungeon gate:He would not know even though a […]

(Written on the occasion of the bringing of the body of Admiral John Paul Jones to the United States for reburial.) Brave ships are these that bear thee home againFrom under far-off skies–brave flags that flyAbove the deck whereon thine ashes lie,Waiting their urn beyond the alien main;The nations pause to view thy funeral trainAs […]

This is the story of Moses,The earliest scribe that we keep:Void was the earth and formless,And dark was the face of the deep,Till God’s word flashed in lightning,Beautiful, bountiful, bright,And night was the name of the darkness,And day was the name of the light. This is the story of Moses–(Doubt it, if ever you can)–The […]

(Written during the hostilities in the Far East in 1900.) Hard by the gates of Eden,Where God first walked with man,In the light of the new creation,Ere the race of Cain began,The world-wide hosts have gathered,And their swords are drawn to slay:God was with man in Eden,But where is God today? From the ice-bound steppes […]

I. Wind of the North, I know your songOut on the frozen plain,But here in the city’s streets you seemOnly a cry of pain. II. I know the note of your lusty throatWhere the black boughs toss and roar,But here it is part of the old, old cryOf the hungry, homeless poor. III. I know […]

O king! what is the quest that evermoreForedooms thy feet to roam, yet blinds thine eyes?Why seek ye still for life’s imperfect prize,Or turn thy weary sail from shore to shore,When here thou layest aside the ills of yoreTo calm thy soul with dreams? Let it suffice–This heart-sick burden of the worldly-wise–That ye have borne […]

I came your way in the years gone by,In the summers that now are old,And then there was light in your beaming eye,And love was living and hopes were highAt the Sign of the Heart of Gold. I come today and the lights are fled,And the trail of the mold and rustHas saddened the hall […]