 | Sicut Patribus and other verse |  |
9
SICUT PATRIBUS
I.
Not mine, not mine the hand to sweep the stringsWith note triumphal, on this hallowed day.
I am no prophet to foretell smooth things,
Or choose a nation's glory for my lay.
The time for pæans is not yet, or past;
Rather the shuddering call that strikes us dumb,
When, unto consciences aroused at last,
The mutterings of a grim tomorrow come.
These be no times for lightsome song:
The shadow of a mighty wrong
Darkens the path before,
Clings like a mist behind;
We crouch, who stood of yore;
We grope, who now are blind.
10
Breathing the air of freedom from our birth,
Who might have kindled in far lands the fires
Of liberty, transfigurer of earth;
Who might have raised a grateful people up
To drain deep draughts from freedom's brimming cup;
Who might have shown them the sure way to peace—
Alas for us! who did no deeds like these.
II.
Alas for us! who light the fires of hateInstead; who dash from eager lips the wine
Of freedom, crying: “Ours, the island state!
'Tis we must hold it by the right divine
Of Saxon peoples, whose benignant sway
Inferior races may not once gainsay.”
Ah me! what sounds are these,
Borne o'er Pacific seas?
The wail of a people's dirge,
That swells as the gathering surge,
Filling our ears with shame,
Staining our country's name.
11
Armenian villages a smoking waste,
A heap of carnage; or his pleasure takes
In torture by his hapless victims faced?
No more may we, our Pharisaic hands
Uplifting, call for vengeance on the Turk,
While in far tropic isles our arméd bands
Engage, relentless, in like curséd work.
III.
In shadowy ranks before me seem to riseThe men of Concord and of Bunker Hill:
Brave souls, who wrung from England that fair prize,
A nation's freedom, that we cherish still.
With questioning, sad eyes,
As in a strange surprise,
They stand
That plain heroic band,
With parted lips, as they who do behold
In deep amaze some undreamed horror wrought,
And pant for action, as in days of old
To Freedom's altar each his offering brought.
12
Who doubts what words of theirs would shame our souls?
The fierce rebukings of our mad desires,
The stern contempt for our unworthy goals.
They never learned in diplomatic phrase
To hide the scheming that plain speech would shame.
Their words, straightforward as their clear-eyed gaze,
Revealed their instant purpose, praise or blame.
But we,
Heirs of a land made free
By blood and strife of these,
Have walked in stranger ways:
Unto new gods our knees
Have bent, our lips sung praise.
IV.
“You, sons of ours!” I seem to hear them say:Drunk with the wine of conquest, you!
What sign of kinship can ye show today
To prove, past cavil, this your lineage true?
We grasped the sword to battle for the right
To stand as freemen forth before the world.
13
For greed of conquest is your flag unfurled.
You, sons of ours, who turn your swords' keen blade
Against the brown man, fighting for his own?
Intent on hearkening the behest of trade
Your human hearts grow cold as any stone.
You, sons of ours, who fling aside the law
And doom the shuddering Negro to the stake
In wild revenge, or cause the halter draw,
Sans judge and jury, as your choice may take—
You, carry into distant tropic lands
The flag of progress, and the Christian cross—
Alas! your house is founded on the sands
Your pride is baseless, and your glory, loss.
Not from unworthy palms
Will men receive the alms
You think to dole.
The freedom-loving soul
Seeks only that, and that denied, he spurns
Your vaunted progress, and your proffered Christ,
Meets all your wiles with wiles of his, and turns
A scornful foeman, whom you deemed enticed.
False to the lessons that ye learned in youth,
How dare ye pray for victory in your strife?
14
Would slay the native, pleading for his life!
Ah, no! and yet,
Who are ye, set
In this same land we died to free?
Ye bear our names, and if it be
Our blood is yours, then did we die in vain;
The pillars that we raised you overturn;
Unholy purpose binds you with its chain,
And all we strove for you would fain unlearn.”
V.
They fade from sight, these builders of our State,And in their stead appear the youthful shades
Of those, our brothers, whom we sent but late
To wage fierce combat in Philippine glades;
To gather glory, where no glory waits;
To strive for honour, where no honour calls;
To bar with bayonets the opening gates
Whereat the Malay, faint for freedom, falls.
“O Motherland!” they cry:
“It had been bliss to die
Fighting to save the State,
But our ignoble fate
Doomed us to die in vain;
15
Spent but for naught;
Our hands, that might have brought
Healing and peace to a long subject race,
Red with their blood, instead; the crowning grace
Of conflict, a just cause, denied our souls,
While o'er our heads the tide of battle rolls.
O Motherland! that you should send us then
To die for conquest, who had died for men!”
VI.
These, too, depart, and in a shadowy cloudA host of swarthy figures 'round me crowd
Using a stranger speech
As from the lips of each
Escapes the bitter cry of men deceived.
“We trusted you,” the voices seem to urge.
“We in your faith and purpose true believed,
Till, like a blow from Heaven, fell the scourge,
And in sad truth we learned
Our friends to foes had turned,
And Spanish fetters were reforged anew.
Ye might have had our love, who gain a hate
Undying, might have garnered praises through
The years to come from a new island State,
16
Turned from us in our need,
And, blindly reckoning on our feebleness,
Struck down the hand that had been raised to bless.
How have ye dealt with those who would be free
As ye yourselves? What lessons have ye taught
Of gentleness, and high humanity,
Of Christian purpose and of noble thought?
Our smiling fields are waste
By Red War's fiery haste;
Our smoking villages
Proclaim the flight of Peace,
And on the torturer's ear unheeded falls
His victim's cry. Beside a hundred streams
The unburied brown man lies, nor frenzied calls
Of wife nor child shall rouse him from his dreams.
VII.
A nation's honour trembles to its fallWhen, at the call
Of angry pride
It swerves aside
From well-worn paths of truth and right
And, conscious of its sad mistake,
Speeds ever on, intent to fight
'Gainst right itself sooner than make
Confession: “We have evil wrought,
17
We own our course with peril fraught,
And turn to ways we trod of yore.”
Alas for us! who close resentful ears
Against the urgings of that inner voice,
And council take of our unworthy fears
That press us onward to an evil choice.
The Nemesis that follows swift upon
The man or nation that provokes its wrath.
Hath followed in our track, nor will begone
Though flights of angels hovered o'er our path.
The swift decay
From day to day
Of high ideals, purpose great,
And brave imaginings for the State—
The lust of empire, pushing to the wall
The weaker races—greed of trade that pays
No heed to aught but sordid gain—these all
To our amaze
Our shameful new inheritance are made,
Blinding our eyes to deeds of violence,
Closing our ears against the plea for aid,
Cheating our souls with shallowest pretence.
Alas! that we
Who flamed with anger at the deeds of Spain
18
Her copy in the far Pacific main.
Calling a world to witness that her crimes
Demanded judgement swift and sure, we caught
The sword and smote. And lo! the changeful times
Reveal us to the same tribunal brought.
VIII.
Ill counsel theyWho urge essay
Persistent in a dubious course
Though all the gathering signs, presage
Moral defeat, and cry, perforce,
“'Tis shameful weakness in our age,
Not to press forward what is once begun.”
He is the coward who would seek to shun
The consequence of turning back
Upon his outward track;
Who fears the foolish word of fools pronounced
Upon him, more than good men's honest scorn.
The moral weakling he who hath renounced
His better self, and soulless walks forelorn,
And as the man, the nation that persists
In ways mistaken, knowing its mistake;
Almighty purpose halts not nor desists
Till erring peoples full confession make.
19
IX.
Not all in vainYe died, who dauntless laid
With strife and pain
The keelson of our Ship of State
Though we have blindly strayed
From out the narrow path of late,
Somewhere within us there abides
The passion for a righteous cause
We learned from you. The swelling tides
Of misdirected purpose pause
Or ever they o'erwhelm us quite;
The waning light
Ye kindled flames anew
As we review
Our heritage, and looking back
Upon our erring track,
Make high resolve again to be
Worthy that ye
Should own us as true sons and heirs,
Mindful the while the alien shares
With us at Freedom's gracious banquet spread,
Nor e'en the humblest turns from thence unfed.
20
X.
But you, our brothers, whose young livesToo soon were quenched across the seas—
Are there no balms that ruth contrives?
No words to give your souls release?
Our erring Motherland
Is slow to understand,
But every life ye gave
Shall help at last to save
Her from herself, to bring her to her knees
In penitence, and therefore not for naught,
Ye, wrongly striving, passed. From you she caught
The first misgivings that disturbed her peace
That was not peace, her poor content
That all her ways were Wisdom-sent.
XI.
Nor yet in vain ye died, our foes, whom we,But for our blinded eyes, had made our friends:
The freedom that ye strove for yet shall be
The guerdon, and the eternal sky that bends
Above both lands may see
With joy the Filipino's flag unfurled
And a new nation born into the world.
21
In combat stern for that high end
Shall sanctify your State, shall tell
A never-wearying tale, shall send
Its inspiration unto those who stay
Behind to welcome in the longed for day,
And fill them with such love for their fair land
They never understand
That have not freely poured their choicest wine
Upon the altar of a cause divine.
XII.
O God of Nations! we have sorely sinned.Thy wind
Of destiny we may not stand before.
Thy open door
Of pardon close not yet
Upon a people who
Repent. O God! forget
Our sin. Let all we do
But show our penitence. Renew our mind.
Point us the way we should remorseful tread,
That we, remembering with tears, may find
While we have sinned, indeed, Truth is not dead,
Though we, for gain,
Against her turned our arms,
And would have slain
Her with our selfish harms!
| Sicut Patribus and other verse | |