eaven
And heaven and Heaven's heaven. Oh thou whose play
Men make to do their work (_Why do their work?_)
--And call from holidays of space, sojourns
Of suns and moons, and lock to earth
(_Why lock to earth?_)
* * * * *
That the Dead Face may flash across the seas
The cry of the new-born babe be heard around
A world. Ah me! and the click of lust
And the madness and the gladness and the ache
Of Dust, Dust!
AN ODE TO THE TELEGRAPH WIRES.
THE SONG THE WORLD SANG LAYING THE ATLANTIC CABLE
The mortal wires of the heart of the earth
I sing, melted and fused by men,
That the immortal fires of their souls should fling
To eaves of heaven and caves of sea,
And God Himself, and farthest hills and dimmest bounds of sense
The flame of the Creature's ken,
The flame of the glow of the face of God
Upon the face of men.
Wind-singing wires
Along their thousand airy aisles,
Feet of birds and songs of leaves,
Glimmer of stars and dewy eves.
Sea-singing wires
Along their thousand slimy miles,
Shadowy deeps,
Unsunned steeps,
Beating in their awful caves
To mouthing fish and bones
And weeds unfurled
Deserts of waves
The heart-beat of this upper world.
Infinite blue, infinite green,
Infinite glory of the ear
Ticking its passions through
Infinite fear,
Ooze of storm, sodden and slanting wrecks
The forever untrodden decks
Of Death,
Ever the seething wires
On the floors
Of the world,
Below the last
Locked fast
Water-darkened doors
Of the sun,
Lighting the awful signal fires
Of our speechless vast desires
On the mountains and the hills
Of the sea
Till the sandy-buried heights
And the sullen sunken vales
And fire-defying barrens of the deep
The hearth of souls shall be
Beacons of Thought,
And from the lurk of the shark
To the sunrise-lighted eerie of the lark
And where the farthest cloud-sail fills
Shall be felt the throbbing and the sobbing and the hoping
The might and mad delight,
The hell-and-heaven groping
Of our little human wills.
AN ODE TO THE WIRELESS
THE PRAYER OF MAN THROUGH ALL THE YEARS IN WHICH THE SKY-TELEGRAPH
WOULD NOT WORK
Roofed in with fears,
Beneath its little strip of sky
That is blown about
In and out
Across my wavering strip of years--
Who am I
Whose singing scarce doth reach
The cloud-climbed hills,
To
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