 | The superhuman antagonists and other poems |  |
51
OTHER POEMS
53
AMERICANS, HAIL!
Frank offspring of that all-adventuring land,
Where, in the petty fray of Lexington,
Thrice fifty summers down the wondrous Past,
Began no less a duel than of Night
And Morning, that was world-watched eight loud years,
Till Morning triumphed, and the watchers knew
America's soil and soul for ever free:
O if you fight as well upon our side
As once you fought against us, how can then
This cause, which is your own and ours and Man's,
Do aught but conquer? You are come to us
Full of the strong wine of your Western air,
Full of the marrow and the sap of life,
Full of the tingle of youth and maiden valour.
You come as Spring comes to the winter fields
When she has hovered long betwixt ‘I will’
And many a coy ‘I will not’; for even so
You hovered, halting betwixt ‘Yea’ and ‘Nay’—
Then thundered ‘Yea’ and hurled your doubts afar.
And not more beautiful upon the mountains
Were ever yet the feet of him that brought
Glad tidings, than your prows upon the sea.
Where, in the petty fray of Lexington,
Thrice fifty summers down the wondrous Past,
Began no less a duel than of Night
And Morning, that was world-watched eight loud years,
Till Morning triumphed, and the watchers knew
America's soil and soul for ever free:
O if you fight as well upon our side
As once you fought against us, how can then
This cause, which is your own and ours and Man's,
Do aught but conquer? You are come to us
Full of the strong wine of your Western air,
54
Full of the tingle of youth and maiden valour.
You come as Spring comes to the winter fields
When she has hovered long betwixt ‘I will’
And many a coy ‘I will not’; for even so
You hovered, halting betwixt ‘Yea’ and ‘Nay’—
Then thundered ‘Yea’ and hurled your doubts afar.
And not more beautiful upon the mountains
Were ever yet the feet of him that brought
Glad tidings, than your prows upon the sea.
Fresh and untired, you find this host of ours
Worn with the burden and stress of fight and toil:
A host, though but of yesterday's begetting,
Already, in blind, deaf hurricane of battle,
Neither ill tried nor proven an ill match
For foes that in their nursery lisped of arms:
A host proud of your great copartnership,
Proud of their strong new brothers in the sword—
That just, that holy, that benignant sword
Whose purpose and whose goal are peace: a host
Famously captained by such chiefs of war
As well might seem the very topmost reach
Of God's own happy art in making men.
55
A host, though but of yesterday's begetting,
Already, in blind, deaf hurricane of battle,
Neither ill tried nor proven an ill match
For foes that in their nursery lisped of arms:
A host proud of your great copartnership,
Proud of their strong new brothers in the sword—
That just, that holy, that benignant sword
Whose purpose and whose goal are peace: a host
Famously captained by such chiefs of war
As well might seem the very topmost reach
Of God's own happy art in making men.
56
And yet, not to the heroes, fighting there
On strangers' soil—or underneath it laid—
Not to the brave that face yon storms of fire,
Be all the laurel, all the glory and praise!
Here, too, is greatness; here are heads grown grey
In council, not yet dreaming of repose;
Here are the athletes of debate, and here
The brains that are the lamps without whose light
Armies would grope and stumble, and noblest prowess
With a waste splendour dazzle a fruitless field.
Here also, his hot thirst for toil unslaked,
The sinews of his lithe mind unrelaxed,
Is he, our Empire's leader: he who set
The wheels of the machine of victory
Whirring and spinning throughout all this isle,
Till Britain hummed as one great mill of war:
A man, no wraith or shadow; a live man,
Loathed by the spectres and the counterfeits;
A man as human as your Lincoln was,
Not muffled up in formula and phrase,
With palisaded spirit, but giving us
Access and entrance to his hopes and fears,
And in companionship of glorious hazard
Bearing us with him, while he treads a road
Built like a causeway across flaming Hell;
Himself a flame of ardour and resolve,
Beset by all the tempests, but unquenched,
Being used to blasts, and native to the storm,
And thriving on the thunder from his prime.
On strangers' soil—or underneath it laid—
Not to the brave that face yon storms of fire,
Be all the laurel, all the glory and praise!
Here, too, is greatness; here are heads grown grey
In council, not yet dreaming of repose;
Here are the athletes of debate, and here
The brains that are the lamps without whose light
Armies would grope and stumble, and noblest prowess
With a waste splendour dazzle a fruitless field.
Here also, his hot thirst for toil unslaked,
The sinews of his lithe mind unrelaxed,
57
The wheels of the machine of victory
Whirring and spinning throughout all this isle,
Till Britain hummed as one great mill of war:
A man, no wraith or shadow; a live man,
Loathed by the spectres and the counterfeits;
A man as human as your Lincoln was,
Not muffled up in formula and phrase,
With palisaded spirit, but giving us
Access and entrance to his hopes and fears,
And in companionship of glorious hazard
Bearing us with him, while he treads a road
Built like a causeway across flaming Hell;
Himself a flame of ardour and resolve,
58
Being used to blasts, and native to the storm,
And thriving on the thunder from his prime.
Ours were the shame, if having such a leader
We proved unworthy at last to be so led,
And lowered the flag of an unshaken will,
And stooped our soul to a stature and a posture
Like theirs who preach a base truck with the foe;
Theirs who desire not to see wickedness
Caught in the noose of its own vile intent,
But hunger for that evil thing, a pact
With evil, nay, a bargain with this pit
That vomiting all putrescence has o'erflowed
On the sweet earth, a treaty with this slime;
Who ask that we betray the spirit of man,
Defraud the world that looked to you and us
As guardians of its inward patrimony,
And co-trustees of its estate of freedom.
From all such grovelling counsellors, and from
The craven mood that in a puissant people
Were the calamity of calamities
And the one desperate ill, a people itself
Must be its own sole saviour. But O friends,
'Twixt whom and us the dark, cold, salt partitions
Avail not now to intercept the heart,
We have an enemy that amid the once
Glad vineyards, orchards, and dear meads of life
Hews at the root of all on earth that flowered!
It flowers no more, for has not he been by?
He found us drowsed and half unsentinelled,
Half unaccoutred and unpanoplied,
Lapt in a human trust of humankind
And dreaming that himself was human too.
Fatal, befooling dream! He spoke indeed
With human organs, gave forth human sounds,
Made human gestures, and his melodists
Had fashioned heretofore high human music,
None fairer and none nobler, and his poets
Had thrilled the world with most perhuman song;
But all his later study and care had been
To rip from his own breast the human heart,
And, having rid him of so vain a thing,
To found upon the hideous ghastly void
The edifice of his thoughts, deeds, and desires;
As if upon a hollow and a want
There could arise aught 'stablisht to endure.
And this, this was not all! For where his heart
Had suffered dread erasure, demons found
Befitting residence and domicile,
And made that cavern in his breast their home.
Yonder they camp, thence do they sally abroad,
And thither from fell foray they return.
These, his foul tenants, these no arms can slay,
Theirs being a monstrous immortality;
But he o'erthrown, their fort and citadel
Were fall'n, and lacking that secure retreat
These Terrors would be terrible no more.
This, then, O friends and mighty aiders, this
Must be your task and ours: to level with earth
That fort, that citadel, that hold itself,
Where all the trooping fiends find harbourage
And trysting-place, and couch and kennel, and whence
In the aghasted eye of the sick day
They make infernal sortie. More than this
No league of Man can compass: less than this
Would, for ourselves or for our woeful heirs,
Be but damnation a brief while deferred,
At best a little putting off of fate,
At best a little miserable ease,
And then the paying of all the arrears of doom,
Vouched in remorseless audit; then indeed
Ruin and perdition and a world undone.
We proved unworthy at last to be so led,
And lowered the flag of an unshaken will,
And stooped our soul to a stature and a posture
Like theirs who preach a base truck with the foe;
Theirs who desire not to see wickedness
Caught in the noose of its own vile intent,
But hunger for that evil thing, a pact
With evil, nay, a bargain with this pit
59
On the sweet earth, a treaty with this slime;
Who ask that we betray the spirit of man,
Defraud the world that looked to you and us
As guardians of its inward patrimony,
And co-trustees of its estate of freedom.
From all such grovelling counsellors, and from
The craven mood that in a puissant people
Were the calamity of calamities
And the one desperate ill, a people itself
Must be its own sole saviour. But O friends,
'Twixt whom and us the dark, cold, salt partitions
Avail not now to intercept the heart,
We have an enemy that amid the once
60
Hews at the root of all on earth that flowered!
It flowers no more, for has not he been by?
He found us drowsed and half unsentinelled,
Half unaccoutred and unpanoplied,
Lapt in a human trust of humankind
And dreaming that himself was human too.
Fatal, befooling dream! He spoke indeed
With human organs, gave forth human sounds,
Made human gestures, and his melodists
Had fashioned heretofore high human music,
None fairer and none nobler, and his poets
61
But all his later study and care had been
To rip from his own breast the human heart,
And, having rid him of so vain a thing,
To found upon the hideous ghastly void
The edifice of his thoughts, deeds, and desires;
As if upon a hollow and a want
There could arise aught 'stablisht to endure.
And this, this was not all! For where his heart
Had suffered dread erasure, demons found
Befitting residence and domicile,
And made that cavern in his breast their home.
Yonder they camp, thence do they sally abroad,
62
These, his foul tenants, these no arms can slay,
Theirs being a monstrous immortality;
But he o'erthrown, their fort and citadel
Were fall'n, and lacking that secure retreat
These Terrors would be terrible no more.
This, then, O friends and mighty aiders, this
Must be your task and ours: to level with earth
That fort, that citadel, that hold itself,
Where all the trooping fiends find harbourage
And trysting-place, and couch and kennel, and whence
In the aghasted eye of the sick day
They make infernal sortie. More than this
63
Would, for ourselves or for our woeful heirs,
Be but damnation a brief while deferred,
At best a little putting off of fate,
At best a little miserable ease,
And then the paying of all the arrears of doom,
Vouched in remorseless audit; then indeed
Ruin and perdition and a world undone.
In that belief, you and ourselves await,
With hope that cannot wholly vanquish fear,
The veiled, tremendous morrow; and yonder stands
Your Nation, watching o'er the sea her sons;
A Nation whence, as from an orchestra
Suavely controlled, there rises goldenly
Though sternly, with far surge and tidal swell,
Not without sad and wailful underflow,
But mighty in heave of sound, all dissonance hushed,
A new Heroic Symphony of war;
Heard throughout Earth with a grave thankfulness
By such as love great music; and perhaps
Ev'n on an ear divine not wholly lost,
Not utterly unacceptable to Heaven.
With hope that cannot wholly vanquish fear,
The veiled, tremendous morrow; and yonder stands
Your Nation, watching o'er the sea her sons;
64
Suavely controlled, there rises goldenly
Though sternly, with far surge and tidal swell,
Not without sad and wailful underflow,
But mighty in heave of sound, all dissonance hushed,
A new Heroic Symphony of war;
Heard throughout Earth with a grave thankfulness
By such as love great music; and perhaps
Ev'n on an ear divine not wholly lost,
Not utterly unacceptable to Heaven.
December 1917.
74
THE FORESIGHT OF THE BLIND
The great, strange, conquering legends puissant stillAs in the Middle Age whence they arose,
Which are they? Sovereign above all are those
Of Faust's dread bargain with the Spirit of Ill,
And of that Knight who, taking long his fill
Of bliss with Venus, earned him longer woes!
And from the Kingdom of our living foes
Came both these dreams, mighty to haunt and thrill,
And each the tale of a lost soul: as though
75
Of her own state and fate on Earth, that sees,
Dark with self-doom, against a fiery glow,
The lost soul of a nation, wandering wide
Like lone Ahasuerus, without ease.
February 1918.
78
TO CERTAIN NEBULAE
Planet and star, and the glory of ancient constellations,These have surfeit of homage, in songs of a thousand singers:
You, O Nebulae, still, as of old, dwell yonder songless;
One in Orion's sword-hilt, one in Andromeda's girdle,
One like shadowy foam, where sails a fantastical Argo.
You, mid Arabian cities, and proud Chaldea, and Egypt,
Mighty astronomers, slowly deciphering Heaven's papyrus,
Oft, no doubt, have watched, in a world all colour and fruitage,
Balsam, sultry aroma, and odorous vivid abundance,
79
Foliage, vintage, plumage, honey and delicate unguents,
Attar and spices and myrrh. And in many a nearer region
Many a wandering gaze hath known your places of ambush,
High above dreams, above tears! But never a golden greeting
Thither ascends, through space, through coldly inhuman vastness,
Out of the mouth of a poet, in magical human numbers.
You, then, far across night, and immense, magnificent silence,
Intricate cosmic coil, and the nodes of entangled orbits,
Let me salute, O pallid, unsplendid things, amid splendour
Hovering ever obscure, amid prideful lustre unprideful:
80
Breath of a hundred stars; but rather appear unto wisdom
Fringes and shreds of the Veil, through which, at the Earth's great moments,
Flashes of God break forth, in the hour of the smiting of Evil;
Day of the clang of the axe upon trees that bore but poison;
Day of the mortal throes of iniquitous perishing empires;
When, upon brows discrowned, the erasing extinguishing thunders
Fall, and the throne of the cruel is tossed as a leaf in the whirlwind.
November 1918.
84
THE SCROLL OF LIFE
Life seems a scroll, not so much darkly writ
As ill transcribed; and he who pores on it
Must, like a painful scholiast, thread perplext
The thorny thicket of a mangled text.
As ill transcribed; and he who pores on it
Must, like a painful scholiast, thread perplext
The thorny thicket of a mangled text.
But with it wov'n is many a quoted line,—
The cryptic prose breaks into verse divine;
And in strange wafts the painful scholiast hears
Hexameters of the Iliad of the Spheres.
The cryptic prose breaks into verse divine;
And in strange wafts the painful scholiast hears
Hexameters of the Iliad of the Spheres.
87
THE INNERMOST CAVERN
The unsailed, the unentered cavern,
The still ungazed upon!
No light but the sea-phosphorescence
Amidst its night hath shone.
The still ungazed upon!
No light but the sea-phosphorescence
Amidst its night hath shone.
Then only it wakes from slumber,
Whenever the visiting gleam
Of the fairy fire of the Ocean
Illumes its secret dream.
Whenever the visiting gleam
Of the fairy fire of the Ocean
Illumes its secret dream.
For it dreams of space without confines,
Of vastness around and above;
And it waits like the heart of a maiden,
That waits to be lit by love.
Of vastness around and above;
And it waits like the heart of a maiden,
That waits to be lit by love.
88
TOIL
Life is a workshop and a temple as well,
Where the great toilers—so their annals tell—
To Justice, Truth, and Love paid worship, knowing
Life was a workshop and a temple as well.
Where the great toilers—so their annals tell—
To Justice, Truth, and Love paid worship, knowing
Life was a workshop and a temple as well.
Life is a workshop and a palace both.
Nature, that ever labours without sloth,
Nature herself in beauty and grace hath taught us
Life is a workshop and a palace both.
Nature, that ever labours without sloth,
Nature herself in beauty and grace hath taught us
Life is a workshop and a palace both.
89
O be it ours, while hate and feud are rife,
To keep far off from this our land the strife
That yonder makes a wreck of Man's own dwelling,
His wondrous workshop, temple and palace, Life.
To keep far off from this our land the strife
That yonder makes a wreck of Man's own dwelling,
His wondrous workshop, temple and palace, Life.
| The superhuman antagonists and other poems | |