the things that have no death
The ones with neither sight nor breath.
Eternity is thrust upon
A bit of earth, a senseless stone.
A grain of dust, a casual clod
Receives the greatest gift of God.
A pebble in the roadway lies--
It never dies.

The grass our fathers cut away
Is growing on their graves to-day;
The tiniest brooks that scarcely flow
Eternally will come and go.
There is no kind of death to kill
The sands that lie so meek and still...
But Man is great and strong and wise--
And so he dies.

III.

MOCKERY

God, I return to you on April days
When along country-roads you walk with me;
And my faith blossoms like the earliest tree
That shames the bleak world with its yellow sprays.
My faith revives when, through a rosy haze,
The clover-sprinkled hills smile quietly;
Young winds uplift a bird's clean ecstacy...
For this, oh God, my joyousness and praise.

But now--the crowded streets and choking airs,
The huddled thousands bruised and tossed about--
These, or the over-brilliant thoroughfares,
The too-loud laughter and the empty shout;
The mirth-mad city, tragic with its cares...
For this, oh God, my silence--and my doubt.

IV.

HUMILITY

Oh God, if I have ever been
So filled with ignorance and sin
That I have dared to use Thy name
In blasphemy, in jest, in shame;
If ever I have dared to flout
Thy works, and mock Thy deeds with doubt,
Thou must forgive me as Thou art divine
For, God, the fault was Thine as well as mine.

Oh, I have used Thee, time on time,
To fill a phrase, to round a rhyme;
But was this wrong? Nay, in Thy heart
Thou knowest the noble theme Thou art...
Was it my fault that as I sung
The daring speech was on my tongue?
Nay; if my singing, God, gave Thee offense,
Thou wouldst have robbed me of the lyric sense.

But dignity hath made Thee dumb,
And so Thou biddest me to come
And be a sonant part of Thee;
To sing Thy praise in blasphemy,
To be the life within the clod
That points the paradox of God.
To chant, beneath a loud and lyric grief,
A faith that flaunts its very disbelief.

FIFTH AVENUE--SPRING AFTERNOON

The world's running over with color,
With whispers, strange fervors and April--
There's a smell in the air as if meadows
Were under our feet.

Spring smiles at the comm