_Here's to the spirit of fire, wherever the flame is unfurled, In the sun, it may be, as a torch, to lead on and enlighten the world; That melted the glacial streams, in the day that no memories reach, That shimmered in amber and shell and weed on the earliest beach; The genius of love and of life, the power that will ever abound, That waits in the bones of the dead, who sleep till the judgment shall sound. Here's to the spirit of fire, when clothed in swift music it comes, The glow of the harvesting songs, the voice of the national drums; The whimsical, various fire, in the rhymes and ideas of men, Buried in books for an age, exploding and writhing again, And blown a red wind round the world, consuming the lies in its mirth, Then locked in dark volumes for long, and buried like coal in the earth. Here's to the comforting fire in the joys of the blind and the meek, In the customs of letterless lands, in the thoughts of the stupid and weak. In the weariest legends they tell, in their cruellest, coldest belief, In the proverbs of counter or till, in the arts of the priest or the thief. Here's to the spirit of fire, that never the ocean can drown, That glows in the phosphorent wave, and gleams in the sea-rose's crown; That sleeps in the sunbeam and mist, that creeps as the wise can but know, A wonder, an incense, a whim, a perfume, a fear and a glow, Ensnaring the stars with a spell, and holding the earth in a net, Yea, filling the nations with prayer, wherever man's pathway is set._ VI _The End of the Road; Moonshine; and Some Proclamations_ AUGUST 1, 1912. Standing up at the Postoffice desk, Pueblo, Colorado. Several times since going over the Colorado border I have had such a cordial reception for the Gospel of Beauty that my faith in this method of propaganda is reawakened. I confess to feeling a new zeal. But there are other things I want to tell in this letter. I have begged my way from Dodge City on, dead broke, and keeping all the rules of the road. I have been asked dozens of times by frantic farmers to help them at various tasks in western Kansas and eastern Colorado. I have regretfully refused all but half-day jobs, having firmly resolved not to harvest again till I have well started upon a certain spiritual enterprise, namely, the writing of certain new poems that have taken possession of me in this high altitude, despite the physical stupidity that comes with strenuous walking. Thereby hangs a tale that I have not room for here.