Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/175

 I hold Alnaschar's feet? And while you have The ghost of Memnon's image all day singing, I sit with aching arms and hardly catch A few spilled echoes of the song of songs— The song that I should have as utterly For mine as other men should once have had The sweetest a glad shepherd ever trilled In Sharon, long ago? Is this the way For me to do good climbing any more Than Phaethon's? Do you think the golden tone Of that far-singing call you all have heard Means any more for you than you should be Wise-heartedly, glad-heartedly yourselves? Do this, there is no more for you to do; And you have no dread left, no shame, no scorn. And while you have your wisdom and your gold, Songs calling, and the Princess in your arms, Remember, if you like, from time to time, Down yonder where the clouded millions go, Your bloody-knuckled scullions are not slaves, Your children of Alnaschar are not fools. "Nor are they quite so foreign or far down As you may think to see them. What you take To be the cursedest mean thing that crawls On earth is nearer to you than you know: You may not ever crush him but you lose, You may not ever shield him but you gain— As he, with all his crookedness, gains with you. Your preaching and your teaching, your achieving, Your lifting up and your discovering, Are more than often—more than you have dreamed— The world-refracted evidence of what Your dream denies. You cannot hide yourselves In any multitude or solitude,