could not well see what then followed: there was a sudden hush, a chorus of exclamations, a rush toward the steps of the town-hall, and then the crowd fell back to make way for two gendarmes who were carrying a body between them.
"Is he dead?" asked a number of voices.
"Oh no," tittered the two men—"only fainted: he'll soon come round again." And the mob burst into a laugh.
THE SYMPHONY
"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!
The age needs heart—'tis tired of head.
We're all for love," the violins said.
"Of what avail the rigorous tale
Of coin for coin and box for bale?
Grant thee, O Trade! thine uttermost hope,
Level red gold with blue sky-slope,
And base it deep as devils grope,
When all's done what hast thou won
Of the only sweet that's under the sun?
Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh
Of true love's least, least ecstasy?"
Then all the mightier strings, assembling,
Fell a-trembling, with a trembling
Bridegroom's heart-beats quick resembling;
Ranged them on the violin's side
Like a bridegroom by his bride,
And, heart in voice, together cried:
"Yea, what avail the endless tale
Of gain by cunning and plus by sale?
Look up the land, look down the land—
The poor, the poor, the poor, they stand
Wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand
Against an inward-opening door
That pressure tightens ever more:
They sigh, with a monstrous foul-air sigh,
For the outside heaven of liberty,
Where Art, sweet lark, translates the sky
Into a heavenly melody.
'Each day, all day' (these poor folks say),
'In the same old year-long, drear-long way,
We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns,
We sieve mine-meshes under the hills,
And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills,
To relieve, O God, what manner of ills?—
Such manner of ills as brute-flesh thrills.
The beasts, they hunger, eat, sleep, die,
And so do we, and our world's a sty;
And, fellow-swine, why nuzzle and cry?
Swinehood hath never a remedy,
The rich man says, and passes by,
And clamps his nostril and shuts his eye.
Did God say once in God's sweet tone,
Man shall not live by bread alone,
But by all that cometh from His white throne?
Yea: God said so,
But the mills say No,
And the kilns and the strong bank-tills say No:
There's plenty that can, if you can't. Go to:
Move out, if you think you're underpaid.
The poor are prolific; we re not afraid;
Business is business; a trade is a trade,
Over and over the mills have said.'"
And then these passionate hot protestings
Changed to less vehement moods, until
They sank to sad suggestings
And requestings sadder still:
"And oh, if the world might some time see
'Tis not a law of necessity
That a trade just naught but a trade must be!
Does business mean, Die, you—live, I?
Then 'business is business' phrases a lie:
'Tis only war grown miserly.
If Traffic is battle, name it so:
War-crimes less will shame it so,
And we victims less will blame it so.
But oh, for the poor to have some part
In the sweeter half of life called Art,
Is not a problem of head, but of heart.
Vainly might Plato's head revolve it:
Plainly the heart of a child could solve it."
And then, as when our words seem all too rude
We cease from speech, to take our thought and brood
Back in our heart's great dark and solitude,
So sank the strings to heartwise throbbing,
Of long chords change-marked with sobbing—
Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heard
Than half wing-openings of the sleeping bird,
Some dream of danger to her young hath stirred.
Then stirring and demurring ceased, and lo!
Every least ripple of the strings' song flow
Died to a level with each level bow,
And made a great chord tranquil-surfaced so
As a brook beneath his curving bank doth go
To linger in the sacred dark and green
Where many boughs the still pool overlean,
And many leaves make shadow with their sheen.
But presently
A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly
Upon the bosom of that harmony,
And sailed and sailed incessantly,
As if a petal from a wild-rose blown
Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone,
And boatwise dropped o' the convex side
And floated down the glassy tide,
And clarified and glorified
The solemn spaces where the shadows bide.
From the velvet convex of that fluted note
Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float—
As if God turned a rose into a throat—
"When Nature from her far-off glen
Flutes her soft messages to men,
The flute can say them o'er again;
Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone,
Breathes through life's strident polyphone
The flute-voice in the world of tone.
Sweet friends,
Man's love ascends
To finer and diviner ends
Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends.
For I, e'en I,
As here I lie,
A petal on a harmony,
Demand of Science whence and why
Man's
