The Wall Street Pit I see a hell of faces surge and whirl, Like maelstrom in the ocean—faces lean And fleshless as the talons of a hawk— Hot faces like the faces of the wolves That track the traveler fleeing through the night— Grim faces shrunken up and fallen in, Deep-plowed like weather-eaten bark of oak— Drawn faces like the faces of the dead, Grown suddenly old upon the brink of Earth. Is this a whirl of madmen ravening, And blowing bubbles in their merriment? Is Babel come again with shrieking crew To eat the dust and drink the roaring wind? And all for what? A handful of bright sand To buy a shroud with and a length of earth? Oh, saner are the hearts on stiller ways! Thrice happier they who, far from these wild hours, Grow softly as the apples on a bough. Wiser the plowman with his scudding blade, Turning a straight fresh furrow down a field— Wiser the herdsman whistling to his heart, In the long shadows at the break of day— Wiser the fisherman with quiet hand, Slanting his sail against the evening wind. The swallow sweeps back from the south again, The green of May is edging all the boughs, The shy arbutus glimmers in the wood, And yet this hell of faces in the town— This storm of tongues, this whirlpool roaring on, Surrounded by the quiets of the hills; The great calm stars forever overhead, And, under all, the silence of the dead! _May, 1901._ A Creed _To Mr. David Lubin_ There is a destiny that makes us brothers: None goes his way alone: All that we send into the lives of others Comes back into our own. I care not what his temples or his creeds, One thing holds firm and fast— That into his fateful heap of days and deeds The soul of a man is cast. The Mighty Hundred Years I I saw the Muses, in august assize, Standing before the Planetary Norns, Their faces lit with calm, victorious eyes, Weird as the beauty shed on starry morns. I heard a voice cry from the Judgment Seat: “Declare unto the Rulers of the Spheres The story of the triumph and defeat, The story of The Mighty Hundred Years.” And then the Muses, bearing in their hands High sibylline scrolls, sang to the Sceptered Powers: “The sun ascends in man, the sky expands; Into the Comrade-Future climb the Hours.