In fury black:

She sees all western nations spent
Or on the rack.

Eastward she sees one land she knew

When from the stone

Priests of the sunrise carved her out

And left her lone.

She sees the shore Confucius walked

On his sorrowful day:

Learned paupers riot yet

In the ancient way;

Officials, futile as of old,

Have gowns more bright;

Bookworms are fiercer than of old,

Their skins more white;

Dust is deeper than of old;

More bats are flying;

More songs are written than of old

More songs are dying.

Where Galahad found forty towns

Now fade and glare

Ten thousand towns with book-tiled roof

And garden-stair,

Where beggars' babies come like showers

Of classic words:

They rule the world-immortal brooks
And magic birds.

The lion Sphinx roars at the sun:
"I hate this nursing you have done!
The meek inherit the earth too long-
When will the world belong to the strong?"
She soars; she claws his patient face-
The girl-moon screams at the disgrace.
The sun's blood fills the western sky;
He hurries not, and will not die.

The baffled Sphinx, on granite wings,
Turns now to where young China sings.
One thousand of ten thousand towns
Go down before her silent wrath;
Yet even lion-gods may faint
And die upon their brilliant path.
She sees the Chinese children romp
In dust that she must breathe and eat.
Her tongue is reddened by its lye;
She craves its grit, its cold and heat.
The Dust of Ages holds a glint
Of fire from the foundation-stones,
Of spangles from the sun's bright face,
Of sapphires from earth's marrow-bones.
Mad-drunk with it, she ends her day-
Slips when a high sea-wall gives way,
Drowns in the cold Confucian sea

Where the whirring fan-girl first flew free.

J

In the light of the maxims of Chesterfield, Mencius,
Franklin or Nietzsche, how great was Confucius?

His fan's gay daughter, crowned with sand,
Between the water and the land

Now cries on high in irony,

With a voice of night-wind alchemy:

“O drownèd cat,

O stony-face,

The joke is on Egyptian pride,

The joke is on the human race:

"The meek inherit the earth too long

When will the world belong to the strong?'

I am born from off the holy fan

Of the world's most civil gentleman.

So answer me,

O deathless sea!"

And thus will the answering Ocean call: "China will fall,

The Empire of China will-crumble down,

When the Alps and the Andes crumble down;
When the sun and the moon have crumbled down,
The Empire of China will crumble down,

Crumble down."

Vachel Lindsay

MOUNTAIN TRAILS, sem.

Night stands in the valley.

Her head

Is bound with stars,

While Dawn, a grey-eyed nun,
Steals through the silent trees.
Behind the mountains
Morning shouts and sings
And dances upward.

II'

Down the eastern sky.

A fleet of clouds drift toward the earth

Bearing a message of forgotten beauty.

Only the brooding mountains,

With robes of purple mist about their shoulders, Can gaze into the glory

Of the sun.

III

The peaks, even today, show finger-prints

Where God last touched the earth,

Before he set it joyously in space

Finding it good.

IV

You, slender, shining—
You, downward leaping—

Born from silent snow

To drown at last in the blue, silent

Mountain lake

You are not snow or water,

You are only a silver spirit

Singing.

Sharp crags of granite

Pointing-threatening

Thrust fiercely at me;

And near the edge their menace

Would whirl me down.

VI

Climbing desperately toward the heights
I glance in terror behind me,

To be deafened-to be shattered-
By a thunderbolt of beauty.

VII

The mountains hold communion:
They are priests, silent and austere;