Classic Poem

Their rightful fate has turned them down.
They will not have a substitute,—
From driving wagons through the town
Descend to grind horse-radish root.
If they wear not the coronal
They'll starve before they strive at all.
The old professional allure,
Decreasing friends, makes want secure,
Until with pride of specialty
They have attained to misery.

And some, like rock beneath the sun
Or weeds or earth or heavy rain,
Are elementally begun,
But never ended or made plain;
Forever promising a spring
They hint of resurrectioning.
They have no thought of time, like trees.
Not so far different from these
The interrupted seers, bowed
And sullen, from lightning of a cloud.

The ardent spirits in the throng
Of care-worn toilers, with a mind
To roar while tracking down the wrong
That is let slip by sleeker kind;
The folk whose phantasies give birth
To wrong that never was on earth,
Alike apportioning their blame
Prophetically fare the same.
As swift as in Jerusalem
Their days of leanness follow them.

Herein are the conservative
Old votaries of seven sins:
Herein the lotterists who give
Their venture to the man that wins;
And they whose lives are different
For the constraining past event
That set the boundary for aye.
The born spectators of the play
Through half-closed eyes' insouciance
Herein observe the puppet-dance.

It is a disenchanting wine
That these will drink unto the end,
Who have nor human nor divine
Approval where the hills descend.
I know not of what Circe's cup
The children of good fortune sup,
What incantations therein flow
That all alike those children grow.
I pray God keep me from success,—
My only answered prayer, I guess.