Chapter IV

A hundred cities sapped by slow decay, A hundred codes and systems proven vain Lie hearsed in sand upon the heaving plain, Memorial ruins mounded, still and gray; And we who plod the barren waste to-day Another code evolving, think to gain Surcease of man's inheritance of pain And mold a state immune from evil's sway.

Not laws; but virtue in the soul we need, The old Socratic justice in the heart, The golden rule become the people's creed When years of training have performed their part For thus alone in home and church and mart Can evil perish and the race be freed.

The Dust Dethroned. [George Sterling]

Sargon is dust, Semiramis a clod! In crypts profaned the moon at midnight peers; The owl upon the Sphinx hoots in her ears, And scant and sear the desert grasses nod Where once the armies of Assyria trod, With younger sunlight splendid on the spears; The lichens cling the closer with the years, And seal the eyelids of the weary god.

Where high the tombs of royal Egypt heave, The vulture shadows with arrested wings The indecipherable boast of kings, As Arab children hear their mother's cry And leave in mockery their toy -- they leave The skull of Pharaoh staring at the sky.

Kinchinjunga. [Cale Young Rice]

(Which is the next highest of mountains)

I

O white Priest of Eternity, around Whose lofty summit veiling clouds arise Of the earth's immemorial sacrifice To Brahma in whose breath all lives and dies; O Hierarch enrobed in timeless snows, First-born of Asia whose maternal throes Seem changed now to a million human woes, Holy thou art and still! Be so, nor sound One sigh of all the mystery in thee found.

II

For in this world too much is overclear, Immortal Ministrant to many lands, From whose ice-altars flow to fainting sands Rivers that each libation poured expands. Too much is known, O Ganges-giving sire! Thy people fathom life and find it dire, Thy people fathom death, and, in it, fire To live again, though in Illusion's sphere, Behold concealed as Grief is in a tear.

III

Wherefore continue, still enshrined, thy rites, Though dark Thibet, that dread ascetic, falls In strange austerity, whose trance appalls, Before thee, and a suppliant on thee calls. Continue still thy silence high and sure, That something beyond fleeting may endure -- Something that shall forevermore allure Imagination on to mystic flights Wherein alone no wing of Evil lights.

IV

Yea, wrap thy awful gulfs and acolytes Of lifted granite round with reachless snows. Stand for Eternity while pilgrim rows Of all the nations envy thy repose. Ensheath thy swart sublimities, unscaled. Be that alone on earth which has not failed. Be that which never yet has yearned or ailed, But since primeval Power upreared thy heights Has stood above all deaths and all delights.

V

And though thy loftier Brother shall be King, High-priest art thou to Brahma unrevealed, While thy white sanctity forever sealed In icy silence leaves desire congealed. In ghostly ministrations to the sun, And to the mendicant stars and the moon-nun, Be holy still, till East to West has run, And till no sacrificial suffering On any shrine is left to tell life's sting.

Scum o' the Earth. [Robert Haven Schauffler]

I

At the gate of the West I stand, On the isle where the nations throng. We call them "scum o' the earth";

Stay, are we doing you wrong, Young fellow from Socrates' land? -- You, like a Hermes so lissome and strong Fresh from the Master Praxiteles' hand? So you're of Spartan birth? Descended, perhaps, from one of the band -- Deathless in story and song -- Who combed their long hair at Thermopylae's pass? Ah, I forget the straits, alas! More tragic than theirs, more compassion-worth, That have doomed you to march in our "immigrant class" Where you're nothing but "scum o' the earth".

II

You Pole with the child on your knee, What dower bring you to the land of the free? Hark! does she croon That sad little tune That Chopin once found on his Polish lea And mounted in gold for you and for me? Now a ragged young fiddler answers In wild Czech melody That Dvorak took whole from the dancers. And the heavy faces bloom In the wonderful Slavic way; The little, dull eyes, the brows a-gloom, Suddenly dawn like the day. While, watching these folk and their mystery, I forget that they're nothing worth; That Bohemians, Slovaks, Croatians, And men of all Slavic nations Are "polacks" -- and "scum o' the earth".

III

Genoese boy of the level brow, Lad of the lustrous, dreamy eyes A-stare at Manhattan's pinnacles now In the first sweet shock of a hushed surprise; Within your far-rapt seer's eyes I catch the glow of the wild surmise That played on the Santa Maria's prow In that still gray dawn, Four centuries gone, When a world from the wave began to rise. Oh, it's hard to foretell what high emprise Is the goal that gleams When Italy's dreams Spread wing and sweep into the skies. Caesar dreamed him a world ruled well; Dante dreamed Heaven out of Hell; Angelo brought us there to dwell; And you, are you of a different birth? -- You're only a "dago", -- and "scum o' the earth"!

IV

Stay, are we doing you wrong Calling you "scum o' the earth", Man of the sorrow-bowed head, Of the features tender yet strong, -- Man of the eyes full of wisdom and mystery Mingled with patience and dread? Have not I known you in history, Sorrow-bowed head? Were you the poet-king, worth Treasures of Ophir unpriced? Were you the prophet, perchance, whose art Foretold how the rabble would mock That shepherd of spirits, erelong, Who should carry the lambs on his heart And tenderly feed his flock? Man -- lift that sorrow-bowed head. Lo! 't is the face of the Christ!

The vision dies at its birth. You're merely a butt for our mirth. You're a "sheeny" -- and therefore despised And rejected as "scum o' the earth".