her praise. 
  The nymphs, cold creatures of man’s colder brain,
  Chilled Nature’s streams till man’s warm heart was fain
  Never to lave its love in them again. 
  Later, a sweet Voice Love thy neighbor said;
  Then first the bounds of neighborhood outspread
  Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread. 
  Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant head: 
  ‘All men are neighbors,’ so the sweet Voice said. 
  So, when man’s arms had measure as man’s race,
  The liberal compass of his warm embrace
  Stretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of space;
  With hands a-grope he felt smooth Nature’s grace,
  Drew her to breast and kissed her sweetheart face: 
  His heart found neighbors in great hills and trees
  And streams and clouds and suns and birds and bees,
  And throbbed with neighbor-loves in loving these. 
  But oh, the poor! the poor! the poor! 
  That stand by the inward-opening door
  Trade’s hand doth tighten ever more,
  And sigh with a monstrous foul-air sigh
  For the outside heaven of liberty,
  Where Nature spreads her wild blue sky
  For Art to make into melody! 
  Thou Trade! thou king of the modern days! 
      Change thy ways,
      Change thy ways;
  Let the sweaty laborers file
      A little while,
      A little while,
  Where Art and Nature sing and smile. 
  Trade! is thy heart all dead, all dead? 
  And hast thou nothing but a head? 
  I’m all for heart,” the flute-voice said,
  And into sudden silence fled,
  Like as a blush that while ’tis red
  Dies to a still, still white instead.

  Thereto a thrilling calm succeeds,
  Till presently the silence breeds
  A little breeze among the reeds
  That seems to blow by sea-marsh weeds: 
  Then from the gentle stir and fret
  Sings out the melting clarionet,
  Like as a lady sings while yet
  Her eyes with salty tears are wet. 
  “O Trade!  O Trade!” the Lady said,
  “I too will wish thee utterly dead
  If all thy heart is in thy head. 
  For O my God! and O my God! 
  What shameful ways have women trod
  At beckoning of Trade’s golden rod! 
  Alas when sighs are traders’ lies,
  And heart’s-ease eyes and violet eyes
      Are merchandise! 
  O purchased lips that kiss with pain! 
  O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain! 
  O trafficked hearts that break in twain! 
 —­And yet what wonder at my sisters’ crime? 
  So hath Trade withered up Love’s sinewy prime,
  Men love not women as in olden time. 
  Ah, not in these cold merchantable days
  Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays
  The one red sweet of gracious ladies’ praise. 
  Now comes a suitor with sharp prying eye—­
  Says, Here, you Lady, if you’ll sell, I’ll buy: 
  Come, heart for heart—­a trade?  What! weeping? why?
  Shame on such wooers’ dapper mercery!