A Cry in Tiie Market Place

I CRY, oh God, for refuge and for rest!
I cannot pray; — there is no time to kneel.
(Can the spoke stop the whizzing of the wheel ?
Can the cast coal in the red forge protest ?)
I cry, by my dead fathers of the West,
Who, in their dire travail, yet could feel
The wild, clean pulse of Nature in the peal
Of storm upon the lordly mountain-crest.

I cry, by right of my ungotten sons,
For respite, for some slacking of the pace,
Some quiet in this rage of life that stuns
The Soul for slaughter in the Market Place.
I cry, in pity for the little ones,
Whose shriveled shoulders must bear on the Race.