University of Virginia Library

Who are you, speeding along this way
Above my head?
Why do you come to the clouds today?
The eagle said.
Had you not heard that pathways high
Only were made for such as I?
Did you not know that from your birth,
You were appointed to walk the earth?
Do as you long were wont to do:
Stab my mountains and creep them through;
Swim your rivers or bridge them o'er;
Ferry the seas from shore to shore;
Plunge through halls of a starless deep,
Where the hosts of the tempests sleep
And count their dead;
But you were made not, as was I,
On the wings of the winds to fly!
The eagle said.
What in my country do you seek?
What is of wealth on the mountain peak?
Which of the gems has it begot?
Where is its gold, excepting what
The sun has shed,
You who squander the hoards you save—
Haughty slaves of the “yellow slave”?
The Eagle said.
Dig in the earth for earth that buys:
Clutch with your greedy hands and eyes,
What, if it win your poor heart, will
Serve but to make you greedier still—
By food unfed;
What do you care for the sky above
More than to aid your own self-love?
The eagle said.
Even your daring flight today—
So the gossiping birdlets say,
With gold is wed:
You, a hero of skies, indeed!
Back to your stony dens of greed,
By avarice fed!