Previous: Inside cover
Next: A COINCIDENCE
THE BAWLING WORLD
A SESTINA.
Be not impatient with the bawling world!—
The clatter of wild newsmongers, the cry
Of those in pulpits, the incessant speech
From many platforms, and the various prayers
Of tale-tellers all striving for our ears,
And poets that wait and gibber—they have cause.
For all this noise there is a natural cause,
Most natural of all that move the world,
The one that first assails a mother's ears
When loud a lusty infant learns to cry,
An inarticulate insistent prayer
But serving that first need as well as speech.
Reason and love combine to give us speech,
But this loud outcry has a simpler cause,
The same that prompts the roaming jackal's prayer
And fills the forests of the untamed world
With one long, jarring hungry piteous cry—
Such cry as still attacks our weary ears.
We long for human music in our ears,
For the clear joy of well-considered speech,
And the true poet's soul-uplifting cry
To lead us forward, striving for the cause
Of liberty and light for all the world—
And hear but this confused insensate prayer.
Vainly we seek to fly this ceaseless prayer—
To find some silent spot—to stop our ears:—
There is no place in all the groaning world
Where we can live apart from human speech:
and we, while speech is governed by this cause,
Are infants "with no language but a cry."
It is for food that all live creatures cry,
For food the sparrow's or the lion's prayer,
And need of food is the continuing cause,
Of all this deafening tumult in our ears.
Had we our food secure—! Then human speech
Might make mild music, and a wiser world!
*
Poor hungry world! No wonder that you cry;
Elaborate speech reduced to primal prayer:
To save our ears let us remove the cause!
Previous: Inside cover
Next: A COINCIDENCE