POET: How crowded with the Rich were the jails, If the jails were a place for robbers.
TRUTH: Not jails, but Revolution.
POET:
The outcast birds of prey press against their cage.
TRUTH: A greater eagle will rend them.
POET: Oh, the poor of the cities, Which drain off into the slums As the lees of wine to the bottom of the vats.
TRUTH: It is a black wine and sits as poison in the cup.
POET:
I have seen the poor sitting naked in the city kennels,
Quarreling over the dirty water of the gutter.
I thought of all free things ; the large sky
And the clear rivers which eternally carry the sky
Beneath the whispering willows.
The brooks, which in Springtime
Fret their way down the hillside,
Through the roots of the silver-stemmed alders, which
stand expectant; The hillsides covered with lusset bracken, which will
soon be green with the new life. Clouds voyaging on unknown adventures, winds dancing
with the tall grasses which glisten; little chipmunks,
dragon flies and wrens. But before me was the black slime of the city's gutters Where the puny children, in play, too pathetical, Grasped at childhood which fluttered by, like a gray moth. If Genius be alight in one of these,
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