Thinking to end all and let the crane crush me, He came by and bore me into the shade: O, what a furnace roaring in his blood Thawed my congealed sinews and tingled my own Raging through me like a strong cordial. He spoke! Since yesterday Am I not larger grown? I’ve seen men hugely shapen in soul, Of such unhuman shaggy male turbulence They tower in foam miles from our neck-strained sight, And to their shop only heroes come; But all were cripples to this speed Constrained to the stables of flesh. I say there is a famine in ripe harvest When hungry giants come as guests: Come knead the hills and ocean into food, There is none for him. The streaming vigours of his blood erupting From his halt tongue are like an anger thrust Out of a madman’s piteous craving for A monstrous balked perfection. OLD HEBREW He is a prince, an animal Not of our kind; who perhaps has heard Vague rumours of our world, to his mind An unpleasant miasma. YOUNG HEBREW Is not Miriam his sister, Jochabed his mother? In the womb he looked round and saw From furthermost stretches our wrong: From the palaces and schools Our pain has pierced dead generations Back to his blood’s thin source. As we lie chained by Egyptian men He lay in nets of their women, And now rejoices he has broken their meshes. O! His desires are fleets of treasure He has squandered in treacherous seas, Sailing mistrust to find frank ports; He fears our fear and tampers mildly For our assent to let him save us. When he walks amid our toil With some master-mason His tense brows, critical Of the loose enginery, Hint famed devices flat, his rod Scratching new schemes on the sand: But read hard the scrawled lines there— Limned turrets and darkness, chinks of light, Half beasts snorting into the light, A phantasmagoria, wild escapade To our hearts’ clue; just a daring plan To the honest mason. What swathed meanings peer From his work-a-day council, washed to and from Your understanding till you doubt That a word was said— But a terror wakes and forces your eyes Into his covertly, to search his searching; Startled to life, starved hopes slink out Cowering, incredulous. OLD HEBREW [_To himself._] His youth is flattered at Moses’ kind speech to him. [_To the_ YOUNG HEBREW.] I am broken and grey, have seen much in my time, And all this gay grotesque of childish man Long passed; half blind, half deaf, I only grumble I am not blind or deaf enough for peace. I have seen splendid young fools cheat themselves Into a prophet’s frenzy; I have seen So many crazed shadows puffed away, And conscious cheats with such an ache for fame