ON THE WAY

LITTLE one, you have been buzzing in the books,
Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with
     lawyers
And amid the educated men of the clubs you have been
     getting an earful of speech from trained tongues.
Take an earful from me once, go with me on a hike
Along sand stretches on the great inland sea here
And while the eastern breeze blows on us and the
     restless surge
Of the lake waves on the breakwater breaks with an ever
     fresh monotone,
Let us ask ourselves: What is truth? what do you or I
     know?
How much do the wisest of the world's men know about
     where the massed human procession is going?

You have heard the mob laughed at?
I ask you: Is not the mob rough as the mountains are
     rough?
And all things human rise from the mob and relapse and
     rise again as rain to the sea.