onest waysides;
But she pours out her heart to the city,
As one woman might to another
Who meet after years...

Restless with color and perfume,
The streets are a riot of blossoms.
What garden could boast of such flowers--
Not Eden itself.

Primroses, pinks and gardenias,
Shame the gray town and its squalor--
Windows are flaming with jonquils;
Fires of gold!

Out of a florist's some pansies
Peer at the crowd, like the faces
Of solemnly mischievous children
Going to bed...

And women--Spring's favorite children--
Frail and phantastically fashioned,
Pass like a race of immortals,
Too radiant for earth.

The pale and the drab are transfigured,
They sing themselves into the sunshine--
Every girl is a lyric,
An urge and a lure.

And, like a challenge of trumpets,
The Spring and its impulse goes through me--
Breezes and flowers and people
Sing in my blood...

Breezes and flowers and people--
And under it all, oh beloved,
Out of the song and the sunshine,
Rises your face!

TRIBUTE

Never will you let me
Tire of leaping passion;
Never can I grow weary
Of undesired joys.

The delicate strength of your bosom;
Your hands' incredible softness;
The fluent curve of your body;
The fierceness of your lips;

Ceaselessly do they call me--
You and your eloquent beauty
Are challenge and invitation
Too ravishing to resist.

Always the burning summons,
The sweet, imperative madness,
Rides over me, like a conqueror,
Careless and confident...

Even so goes Love,
Trampling and invincible;
With rapt and pitiless beauty,
Rough-shod over the world!

SONGS OF PROTEST

_To James Oppenheim_

CHALLENGE

_The quiet and courageous night,
The keen vibration of the stars,
Call me, from morbid peace, to fight
The world's forlorn and desperate wars._

_The air throbs like a rolling drum--
The brave hills and the singing sea,
Unrest and people's faces come
Like battle-trumpets, rousing me._

_And while Life's lusty banner flies,
I shall assail, with raging mirth,
The scornful and untroubled skies,
The cold complacency of earth._

CALIBAN IN THE COAL MINES

God, we don't like to complain
We know that the mine is no lark--
But--there's the pools from