| |
| 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 traveller fleeing through the night— | 5 |
| Grim faces shrunken up and fallen in, | |
| Deep-ploughed 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, | 10 |
| 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? | 15 |
| |
| 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 ploughman with his scudding blade, | |
| Turning a straight fresh furrow down a field— | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| 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 quiet of the hills; | 30 |
| The great calm stars forever overhead, | |
| And, under all, the silence of the dead! | |
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