Towards democracy

The Trysting 421

Senseless as any clod.

Above, the flowers he has brought lie wilting in the sun;

Around, the common-place dingy scene extends—the dreary cemetery,

The stones, the walls, the houses.—

What boots it all?

These senseless things that neither see nor hear,

To senseless things what message can they bear?

Yet he, he hears and sees.

A natural child, untaught, reckless of custom and what they call religion,

He hears and sees things hidden from the learnéd ;

He glimpses forms beyond the walls of Time.

Of bibles, creeds and churches he knows nothing,

And all that science has said about life and death and atom-dances and the immutable laws of matter,

And all the impassable lines and barriers that the professors and specialists have built up out of their own imaginations—

These simply exist not, for him,

He only knows she comes, the loyed and worshiped—

Comes, takes the flowers,

Stands like a thin mist in the sun beside him,

Looks in his eyes, and touches him again.

And to its depth his heart shakes, breaking backward, Tears rise once more, earth reels, the sun is splintered, Stones, houses, and the solid sky dissolve,