Poor are the gifts of the poet—
Nothing but words!
The gifts of kings are gold,
Silver, and flocks and herds,
Garments of strange soft silk,
Feathers of wonderful birds,
Jewels and precious stones,
And horses white as the milk—
These are the gifts of kings:
But the gifts that the poet brings
Are nothing but words.
Forty thousand words!
Take them—a gift of flies!
Words that should have been birds,
Words that should have been flowers,
Words that should have been stars
In the eternal skies.
Forty thousand words!
Forty thousand tears—
All out of two sad eyes.
At one end of the city that I love there is a tall, dingy pile ofoffices that has evidently seen more prosperous fortunes. It is not thearistocratic end. It is remote from the lordly street of the fine shopsof the fair women, where in the summer afternoons the gay bank clerksparade arm-in-arm in the wake of the tempestuous petticoat. It liesaside from the great exchange which looks like a scene from Romeo andJuliet in the moonlight, from the town-hall from whose clocked andgilded cupola ring sweet chimes at midnight, and whence, throned abovethe city, a golden Britannia, in the sight of all men, is seen visiblyruling the waves—while in the square below the death of Nelson isplayed all day in stone, with a frieze of his noble words about thepedestal. England expects! What an influence that stirring challengehas yet upon the hearts of men may be seen by any one who will study thefaces of the busy, imaginative cotton-brokers, who, in the thronged andhumming mornings, sell what they have never seen to a customer they willnever see.
In fact, the end I mean is just the very opposite end to that. It is theend where the cotton that everybody sells and nobody buys is seen,piled in great white stacks, or swinging in the air from the necks ofmighty cranes, cranes that could nip up an elephant with as little ado,an