Page:The Poet in the Desert.djvu/31

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Continually expanding;

Continually returning to the source.

Man, not more nor less than the lowliest of these.

The weeds have the benignant care of the Mother

perfectly as the wide-spreading oaks and lofty firs. And the children of men not any more her solicitude than

the babies of the beetle Which tenderly she feeds in their dark and earthy

lodgings. She holds the suns lightly between her fingers, Yet delights in the infinite atoms which our eyes cannot

see. She has established eternal conditions whose penalty is

death, but leaves all free to seek life. She governs nothing ; commands nothing ; enforces

nothing. How then shall the smallest soul be governed by another?

POET: The ant-hill as dear to Nature as the vastest city.

TRUTH: Yea, dearer, for the little folk know freedom. With them. Justice plays awhile. The curious architects, The ants, will yet build in the streets of the proudest city, If the city finds not freedom.

POET: The peace of Life which is Justice has not yet come to

men. But the peace of Death is insistent.

TRUTH: Man considers only what his eyes see. Yet the things unseen destroy his body ; And the things unseen destroy his soul. He lives and dies upon a world he cannot see ; Yet he would control the soul of his brother.

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