Cheeks are pale, but hands are red, God has plans man must not spoil, Devil's theories are these, Stifling hope and love and peace, Framed your hideous lusts to please, Hunger and Cold! Scatter ashes on thy head, Ere they block the very door THE LANDLORD. WHAT boot your houses and your lands? In spite of close-drawn deed and fence, Like water, 'twixt your cheated hands, They slip into the graveyard's sands And mock your ownership's pretence. How shall you speak to urge your right, Choked with that soil for which you lust? The bit of clay, for whose delight You grasp, is mortgaged, too; Death might Fence as you please, this plain poor man, Owns you and fences as is fit. Though yours the rents, his incomes wax He takes you from your-easy chair, And starves, the landlord over you Feeding the clods your idlesse drains, You make more green six feet of soil; His fruitful word, like suns and rains, Partakes the seasons' bounteous pains, And toils to lighten human toil. Your lands, with force or cunning got, TO A PINE-TREE. FAR up on Katahdin thou towerest, In the storm, like a prophet o'ermaddened, When whole mountains swoop valeward. In the calm thou o'erstretchest the valleys To the lumberer asleep 'neath thy glooming Whose finned isles are their cattle. For the gale snatches thee for his lyre, Whose arms stretch to his playmate. The wild storm makes his lair in thy branches, Spite of winter, thou keep'st thy green glory, Thou alone know'st the splendor of winter, 'Mid thy snow-silvered, hushed precipices, Hearing crags of green ice groan and splinter, And then plunge down the muffled abysses In the quiet of midnight. Thou alone know'st the glory of summer, Gazing down on thy broad seas of forest, On thy subjects that send a proud murmur Up to thee, to their sachem, who towerest From thy bleak throne to heaven. |