Chapter 21

LETTING THE CROWDS BE GOOD

TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN

They stay not in their hold These stokers, Stooping to hell To feed a ship. Below the ocean floors. Before their awful doors Bathed in flame, I hear their human lives Drip--drip.

Through the lolling aisles of comrades In and out of sleep, Troops of faces To and fro of happy feet, They haunt my eyes. Their murky faces beckon me From the spaces of the coolness of the sea Their fitful bodies away against the skies.