"HOW long shall Man be Nature's fool?" Man cries; "Be like those great, gaunt oxen, drilled and bound, Inexorably driven round and round To turn the water-wheel with bandaged eyes? And as they trudge beneath Egyptian skies, Watering the wrinkled desert's beggared ground, The hoarse Sâkiyeh's lamentable sound Fills all the land as with a people's sighs?" Poor Brutes! Who in unconsciousness sublime, Replenishing the ever-empty jars, Endow the waste with palms and harvest gold: And men, who move in rhythm with moving stars, Should shrink to give the borrowed lives they hold: Bound blindfold to the groaning wheel of Time. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PLAYING SOMEONE ELSE'S PIANO by KAREN SWENSON AN APPEAL TO CATS IN THE BUSINESS OF LOVE; SONG by THOMAS FLATMAN THE WINDOW; OR, THE SONG OF THE WRENS: THE LETTER by ALFRED TENNYSON HAMPTON BEACH by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER THE SHOEMAKERS by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER |