Labor and the Angel. Duncan Campbell Scott

      Sexless and featureless,

      (Only the children

      Different among them,

      Crawling between their feet,

      Borne on their shoulders;)

      Rolling their shaggy heads

      Wild with the unheard-of

      Drug of the sunshine;

      Tears that had eaten

      The half of their eyelids

      Dry on their cheeks;

      Blood in their stiffened hair

      Clouted and darkened;

      Down in their cavern hearts

      Hunger the tiger,

      Leaping, exulting;

      Sighs that had choked them

      Burst into triumphing;

      On they come, Victory!

      Up to the wheat-fields,

      Dreamed of in visions

      Bred by the hunger,

      Seen for the first time

      Splendid and golden;

      On they come fluctuant,

      Seething and breaking,

      Weltering like fire

      In the pit of the earthquake,

      Bursting in heaps

      With the sudden intractable

      Lust of the hunger:

      Then when they see them—

      The miles of the harvest

      White in the sunshine,

      Rushing and stumbling,

      With the mighty and clamorous

      Cry of a people

      Starved from creation,

      Hurl themselves onward,

      Deep in the wheat-fields,

      Weeping like children,

      After ages and ages,

      Back at the breasts

      Of their mother the earth.

      Night in the valley,

      Gloom on the mountain,

      Wind in the wheat,

      Far to the southward

      The flutter of lightning,

      The shudder of thunder;

      But high at the zenith,

      A cluster of stars

      Glimmers and throbs

      In the grasp of the midnight,

      Steady and absolute,

      Ancient and sure.