| |
| HE perches in the slime, inert, | |
| Bedaubed with iridescent dirt. | |
| The oil upon the puddles dries | |
| To colors like a peacock’s eyes, | |
| And half-submerged tomato-cans | 5 |
| Shine scaly, as leviathans | |
| Oosily crawling through the mud. | |
| The ground is here and there bestud | |
| With lumps of only part-burned coal. | |
| His duty is to glean the whole, | 10 |
| To pick them from the filth, each one, | |
| To hoard them for the hidden sun | |
| Which glows within each fiery core | |
| And waits to be made free once more. | |
| Their sharp and glistening edges cut | 15 |
| His stiffened fingers. Through the smut | |
| Gleam red the wounds which will not shut. | |
| Wet through and shivering, he kneels | |
| And digs the slippery coals—like eels | |
| They slide about. His force all spent | 20 |
| He counts his small accomplishment. | |
| A half-a-dozen clinker-coals | |
| Which still have fire in their souls. | |
| Fire! And in his thought there burns | |
| The topaz fire of votive urns. | 25 |
| He sees it fling from hill to hill, | |
| And still consumed, is burning still. | |
| Higher and higher leaps the flame, | |
| The smoke an evershifting frame. | |
| He sees a Spanish Castle old, | 30 |
| With silver steps and paths of gold. | |
| From myrtle-bowers comes the plash | |
| Of fountains, and the emerald flash | |
| Of parrots in the orange trees, | |
| Whose blossoms pasture humming bees. | 35 |
| He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke | |
| Bears visions, that his master stroke | |
| Is out of dirt and misery | |
| To light the fire of poesy. | |
| He sees the glory, yet he knows | 40 |
| That others cannot see his shows. | |
| To them his smoke is sightless, black, | |
| His votive vessels but a pack | |
| Of old discarded shards, his fire | |
| A peddler’s; still to him the pyre | 45 |
| Is incensed, an enduring goal! | |
| He sighs and grubs another coal. | |
| |
