“A short bread-line before a hitherto empty tea shop: No questions--all stood patiently, Dominated by one idea: something That carried them as they are always wanting to be carried, ‘But what is it,’ I asked those nearest me, ‘This thing heretofore unobtainable That they seem so clever to have put on now!’ “Why since I have failed them can it be anything but their own brood? Can it be anything but brutality? On that at least they’re united! That at least Is their bean soup, their calm bread and a few luxuries! “But in me, more sensitive, marvelous old queen It sank deep into the blood, that I rose upon The tense air enjoying the dusty fight! Heavy drink were the low, sloping foreheads The flat skulls with the unkempt black or blond hair, The ugly legs of the young girls, pistons Too powerful for delicacy! The women’s wrists, the men’s arms, red Used to heat and cold, to toss quartered beeves And barrels, and milk-cans, and crates of fruit! “Faces all knotted up like burls on oaks, Grasping, fox-snouted, thick-lipped, Sagging breasts and protruding stomachs, Rasping voices, filthy habits with the hands. “Nowhere you! Everywhere the electric! “Ugly, venemous, gigantic! Tossing me as a great father his helpless Infant till it shriek with ecstasy And its eyes roll and its tongue hangs out!-- “I am at peace again, old queen, I listen clearer now.” ABROAD Never, even in a dream, Have I winged so high nor so well As with her, she leading me by the hand, That first day on the Jersey mountains! And never shall I forget The trembling interest with which I heard Her voice in a low thunder: “You are safe here. Look child, look open-mouth! The patch of road between the steep bramble banks; The tree in the wind, the white house there, the sky! Speak to men of these, concerning me! For never while you permit them to ignore me In these shall the full of my freed voice Come grappling the ear with intent! Never while the air’s clear coolness Is seized to be a coat for pettiness; Never while richness of greenery Stands a shield for prurient minds; Never, permitting these things unchallenged Shall my voice of leaves and varicolored bark come free through!” At which, knowing her solitude, I shouted over the country below me: “Waken! my people, to the boughs green With ripening fruit within you! Waken to the myriad cinquefoil In the waving grass of your minds! Waken to the silent phoebe nest Under the eaves of your spirit!”