Library of the World's Best Literature/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?

Le Poète et la Foule