Demonish, toiling, grim,
In the ruddy furnace flare,
While the Driver fingers the throttle-bar,
Who stands at his elbow there?

Can it be, this thing like a shred
Of the firmament torn away,
Is a boarded train that Death and his crew
Consorted to waylay?

His wreckers, grinning and lean,
Are lurking at every curve;
But the Driver plays with the throttle-bar;
He has the iron nerve.

We are travelling safe and warm,
With our little baggage of cares;
Why tease the peril that yet would come
Unbidden and unawares?

The lonely are lonely still;
And the friend has another friend;
Only the idle heart inquires
The distance and the end.

We pant up the climbing grade,
And coast on the tangent mile,
While the Driver toys with the throttle-bar,
And gathers the track in his smile.

The dreamer weary of dreams,
The lover by love released,
Stricken and whole, and eager and sad,
Beauty and waif and priest,

All these adventure forth,
Strangers though side by side,
With the tramp of time in the roaring wheels,
And haste in their shadowy stride.

The star that races the hills
Shows yet the night is deep;
But the Driver humors the throttle-bar;
So, you and I may sleep.

For He of the sleepless hand
Will drive till the night is done—­
Will watch till morning springs from the sea,
And the rails stand gold in the sun;

Then he will slow to a stop
The tread of the driving-rod,
When the night express rolls into the dawn;
For the Driver’s name is God.

[Illustration]

The Dustman

“Dustman, dustman!”
Through the deserted square he cries,
And babies put their rosy fists
Into their eyes.

There’s nothing out of No-man’s-land
So drowsy since the world began,
As “Dustman, dustman,
Dustman.”

He goes his village round at dusk
From door to door, from day to day;
And when the children hear his step
They stop their play.

“Dustman, dustman!”
Far up the street he is descried,
And soberly the twilight games
Are laid aside.

“Dustman, dustman!”
There, Drowsyhead, the old refrain,
“Dustman, dustman!”
It goes again.

Dustman, dustman,
Hurry by and let me sleep. 
When most I wish for you to come,
You always creep.

Dustman, dustman,
And when I want to play some more,
You never then are further off
Than the next door.

“Dustman, dustman!”
He heckles down the echoing curb,
A step that neither hopes nor hates
Ever disturb.

“Dustman, dustman!”
He never varies from one pace,
And the monotony of time
Is in his face.

And some day, with more potent dust,
Brought from his home beyond the deep,
And gently scattered on our eyes,
We, too, shall sleep,—­