"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...THE TRANSIENCE OF HANDS by KAREN SWENSON THE REVEILLE by FRANCIS BRET HARTE CLOTHES DO BUT CHEAT AND COZEN US by ROBERT HERRICK STONEWALL JACKSON'S WAY by JOHN WILLIAMSON PALMER AFAR IN THE DESERT by THOMAS PRINGLE AMORETTI: 37 by EDMUND SPENSER SONNETS OF MANHOOD: 31. A QUESTION by GEORGE BARLOW (1847-1913) |