Chapter II: Fever

The cool, sweet earth is cool and sweet indeed,
To flesh that fever makes a cinder of,--
An angel with cool hands to cup his need,
In ministrations, kinder yet than love.
There, a cool cheek to lay against his own,
And rest for that hot blood's too restless will,
His hands to curve on root or clod or stone;--
And deep-dug earth is very, very still.

Yet some, remembering happiness he had
Of living things, of leaf and sun and air,
Could pity him his prison, and be sad,--
Not knowing how he is companioned there,
Nor how, for such as he and his great need,
The cool, sweet earth is cool and sweet indeed.