Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/310

 And sheltered them, till all the little band

Stood mustered gazing at the sunset way

Whence he would come with store at close of day.

He soothed the silly sheep with friendly tone

And reared their staggering lambs that, older grown,

Followed his steps with sense-taught memory;

Till he, their shepherd, could their leader be

And guide them through the pastures as he would,

With sway that grew from ministry of good.

He spread his tents upon the grassy plain

Which, eastward widening like the open main,

Showed the first whiteness 'neath the morning star;

Near him his sister, deft, as women are,

Plied her quick skill in sequence to his thought

Till the hid treasures of the milk she caught

Revealed like pollen 'mid the petals white,

The golden pollen, virgin to the light.

Even the she-wolf with young, on rapine bent,

He caught and tethered in his mat-walled tent,

And cherished all her little sharp-nosed young

Till the small race with hope and terror clung

About his footsteps, till each new-reared brood,

Remoter from the memories of the wood,

More glad discerned their common home with man.

This was the work of Jabal: he began

The pastoral life, and, sire of joys to be.

Spread the sweet ties that bind the family

O'er dear dumb souls that thrilled at man's caress,

And shared his pains with patient helpfulness.

But Tubal-Cain had caught and yoked the fire.

Yoked it with stones that bent the flaming spire

And made it roar in prisoned servitude

Within the furnace, till with force subdued

It changed all forms he willed to work upon,