Vv 
The very water that we crave is measured out 
In rigid fractions of an inch— 
So much at five, so much at twelve 
And then again at three—if so permits 
Barometer, hygrometer or such. 
vi 
Our food is rationed in accord with scientific lore— 
So much of nitrogen and this— 
So much of that and of those other things 
Essential to the nutriment of plants:— 
Potash, lime and humus, and all the various vitamins 
Pale sickly chemists have devised 
To kill romance in appetites of man and plant. 
The very light we need to stir our organs into action 
Is regulated nicely, with paint and blind and screen. 
They fear the kindly sun will burn us— 
We who have lived for centuries 
In strait communion with the Lord of Light! 
Vil 
Our lord and master, kindly soul, oft frets 
To find that I, who seem to grow in native vigour, 
Yet show no sign of sheath or spike— 
He’s done, he feels, the whole appointed catalogue of things 
That makes an orchid blossom! 
But how can I, pent prisoner in a humid cell 
Deprived of sun and breeze and all the high adventure 
That Mother Nature wills shall be 
The inspiration and the goad to my fruition? 
Can the wild bird, enclosed in an iron cage 
Pour out its full sweet ecstasy of song?’ 
Can the raped beauty, torn unwilling from her father’s home 
To be just one more houri in a jaded sultan’s bed, 
Give to her aged diseased lord the gift of Love? 
Or can the glittering streamlet, rushing down the glade, 
Ripple and sing when some dull farmer’s oaf 
Has thrown a dam of mud and branch across her course? 
Vill 
Up on Parima’s heights there is a tree 
That stands Titanic ’midst its brother giants. 
Its high branched stem is clothed 
With firm and fibrous bark 
372 
