Page:The Poet in the Desert.djvu/101



POET:

Not only the fields which laugh before us,

But also the gardens, which are exquisite.

Red beets, with purple leaves, blood-veined ;

Golden carrots, with green plumes ;

Stout cabbages, blue-green, as if silvered with a frost

Winter had forgotten. Groping beans, which quickly clamber to the utmost top. Those ropes by which the valiant Jack Climbed from earth to clouds. As so would I ;

White-blossomed peas, and the young peas vSugary in the cradle-pod ; Tomato-vines, hung with scarlet fruit, And the countless gifts which are born In the dark, mysterious earth. Potatoes, turnips, onions, and the parsnip Which once was the deadly hemlock that slew Socrates.

TRUTH: Nay, not the hemlock slew him, But the men he would have saved.

POET: Yet now it has become wholesome.

TRUTH: The poison of yesterday, the food of tomorrow. Wrong ever changing into right and right to wrong.

POET: The purple-globed egg-plant from Arabia, And luscious melons from the Persians ; Melons of Nusrabad and Casaba ; Water-melons, chrysoprase-casks of nectar. What marvel that it is stored through so small a pipe.

TRUTH: The humblest stem may be conduit to the waters of Life.

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