C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

The Poet and the Crowd

ONE day the plain said to the idle mountain:—

Nothing ever grows upon thy wind-beaten brow!

To the poet, bending thoughtful over his lyre,

The crowd also said:—Dreamer, of what use art thou?

Full of wrath, the mountain answered the plain:—

It is I who make the harvests grow upon thy soil;

I temper the breath of the noon sun,

I stop in the skies the clouds as they fly by.

With my fingers I knead the snow into avalanches,

In my crucible I dissolve the crystals of glaciers,

And I pour out, from the tip of my white breasts,

In long silver threads, the nourishing streams.

*****

The poet, in his turn, answered the crowd:—

Allow my pale brow to rest upon my hand.

Have I not from my side, from which runs out my soul,

Made a spring gush to slake men’s thirst?