Rodin in Rime

Here set the travailers of land; Here the young shepherd, fluteless now; The mariner with tarry hand; The clerk, with pale and foolish brow, His brain bought cheap for brainless grind: The bloodless martyr of the mind! Grow up the grades, O godlike hand, Rodin, most rightly named “August”! Thy splendid sons and daughters stand Obedient to the master “must.” The decadent dust thy spells assoil; Death lives in this, thy Tower of Toil. Grow up the grades! record the tasks These arduous phantoms have achieved! The growth of mind to mortals asks A power not swift to be believed. What bosoms heaved ere Nature's age From monkey-man deduced the sage! So be thy spiral tower the type Of higher convolutions drawn From hunger’s woe and murder’s gripe And lust’s revulsion to the dawn Of days that spawn on holier soil Thy loftier sons, O Tower of Toil. 17