Swinehood hath never a remedy,
  The rich man says, and passes by,
  And clamps his nostril and shuts his eye. 
  Did God say once in God’s sweet tone,
  Man shall not live by bread alone,
  But by all that cometh from His white throne? 
      Yea:  God said so,
      But the mills say No,
  And the kilns and the strong bank-tills say No: 
  There’s plenty that can, if you can’t.  Go to: 
  Move out, if you think you’re underpaid. 
  The poor are prolific; we re not afraid;
  Business is business; a trade is a trade,
  Over and over the mills have said.’”

  And then these passionate hot protestings
    Changed to less vehement moods, until
  They sank to sad suggestings
    And requestings sadder still: 
  “And oh, if the world might some time see
  ’Tis not a law of necessity
  That a trade just naught but a trade must be! 
  Does business mean, Die, you—­live, I?
  Then ‘business is business’ phrases a lie: 
  ’Tis only war grown miserly. 
  If Traffic is battle, name it so: 
  War-crimes less will shame it so,
  And we victims less will blame it so. 
  But oh, for the poor to have some part
  In the sweeter half of life called Art,
  Is not a problem of head, but of heart. 
  Vainly might Plato’s head revolve it: 
  Plainly the heart of a child could solve it.”

  And then, as when our words seem all too rude
  We cease from speech, to take our thought and brood
  Back in our heart’s great dark and solitude,
  So sank the strings to heartwise throbbing,
  Of long chords change-marked with sobbing—­
  Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heard
  Than half wing-openings of the sleeping bird,
  Some dream of danger to her young hath stirred.

  Then stirring and demurring ceased, and lo! 
  Every least ripple of the strings’ song flow
  Died to a level with each level bow,
  And made a great chord tranquil-surfaced so
  As a brook beneath his curving bank doth go
  To linger in the sacred dark and green
  Where many boughs the still pool overlean,
  And many leaves make shadow with their sheen. 
    But presently
  A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly
  Upon the bosom of that harmony,
  And sailed and sailed incessantly,
  As if a petal from a wild-rose blown
  Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone,
  And boatwise dropped o’ the convex side
  And floated down the glassy tide,
  And clarified and glorified
  The solemn spaces where the shadows bide.

  From the velvet convex of that fluted note
  Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float—­
  As if God turned a rose into a throat—­
  “When Nature from her far-off glen
  Flutes her soft messages to men,
  The flute can say them o’er again;
  Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone,
  Breathes through life’s strident