LITMIR.BIZ

      Whence these hods, and bricks of bright red clay,

      And swart men climbing ladders in the night?

      Stilled are the clamorous energies of day,

      The streets are dumb, and, prodigal of light,

      The lamps but shine upon a city of sleep.

      A step goes out into the silence; far

      Across the quiet roofs the hour is tolled

      From ghostly towers; the indifferent earth may keep

      That ragged flotsam shielded from the cold

      In earth’s good time: not, moving among men,

      Shall he compel so fortunate a star.

      Pavements I know, forsaken now, are strange,

      Alien walks not beautiful, that then,

      In the familiar day, are part of all

      My breathless pilgrimage, not beautiful, but dear;

      The monotony of sound has suffered change,

      The eddies of wanton sound are spent, and clear

      To bleak monotonies of silence fall.

      And, while the city sleeps, in the central poise

      Of quiet, lamps are flaming in the night,

      Blown to long tongues by winds that moan between

      The growing walls, and throwing misty light

      On swart men bearing bricks of bright red clay

      In laden hods; and ever the thin noise

      Of trowels deftly fashioning the clean

      Long lines that are the shaping of proud thought.

      Ghost-like they move between the day and day,

      These men whose labour strictly shall be wrought

      Into the captive image of a dream.

      Their sinews weary not, the plummet falls

      To measured use from steadfast hands apace,

      And momently the moist and levelled seam

      Knits brick to brick and momently the walls

      Bestow the wonder of form on formless space.

      And whence all these? The hod and plummet-line,

      The trowels tapping, and the lamps that shine

      In long, dust-heavy beams from wall to wall,

      The mortar and the bricks of bright red clay,

      Ladder and corded scaffolding, and all

      The gear of common traffic – whence are they?

      And whence the men who use them?

      When he came,

      God upon chaos, crying in the name

      Of all adventurous vision that the void

      Should yield up man, and man, created, rose

      Out of the deep, the marvel of all things made,

      Then in immortal wonder was destroyed

      All worth of trivial knowledge, and the close

      Of man’s most urgent meditation stayed

      Even as his first thought – “Whence am I sprung?”

      What proud ecstatic mystery was pent

      In that first act for man’s astonishment,

      From age to unconfessing age, among

      His manifold travel. And in all I see

      Of common daily usage is renewed

      This primal and ecstatic mystery

      Of chaos bidden into many-hued

      Wonders of form, life in the void create,

      And monstrous silence made articulate.

      Not the first word of God upon the deep

      Nor the first pulse of life along the day

      More marvellous than these new walls that sweep

      Starward, these lines that discipline the clay,

      These lamps swung in the wind that send their light

      On swart men climbing ladders in the night.

      No trowel-tap but sings anew for men

      The rapture of quickening water and continent,

      No mortared line but witnesses again

      Chaos transfigured into lineament.

      The large report of fame I lack,

      And shining clasps and crimson scars,

      For I have held my bivouac

      Alone amid the untroubled stars.

      My battle-field has known no dawn

      Beclouded by a thousand spears;

      I’ve been no mounting tyrant’s pawn

      To buy his glory with my tears.

      It never seemed a noble thing

      Some little leagues of land to gain

      From broken men, nor yet to fling

      Abroad the thunderbolts of pain.

      Yet I have felt the quickening breath

      As peril heavy peril kissed —

      My weapon was a little faith,

      And fear was my antagonist.

      Not a brief hour of cannonade,

      But many days of bitter strife,

      Till God of His great pity laid

      Across my brow the leaves of life.

      Time gathers to my name;

      Along the ways wheredown my feet have passed

      I see the years with little triumph crowned,

      Exulting not for perils dared, downcast

      And weary-eyed and desolate for shame

      Of having been unstirred of all the sound

      Of the deep music of the men that move

      Through the world’s days in suffering and love.

      Poor barren years that brooded over-much

      On your own burden, pale and stricken years —

      Go down to your oblivion, we part

      With

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