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 | The poems of Madison Cawein |  |
276
MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN
I
Behold! we have gathered together our battleships near and afar;Their decks, they are cleared for action; their guns, they are shotted for war:
From the East to the West there is hurry; in the North and the South a peal
Of hammers in fort and shipyard, and the clamor and clang of steel;
And the roar and the rush of engines, and clanking of derrick and crane—
Thou art weighed in the Scales and found wanting! the balance of God, O Spain!
II
Behold! I have stood on the mountains, and this was writ in the sky:—“She is weighed in the Scales and found wanting! the balance God holds on high!”
277
One scale holds thy pride and thy power and empire, begotten of sin;
Heavy with woe and torture, the crimes of a thousand years,
Mortared and welded together with fire and blood and tears:
In the other, for justice and mercy, a blade with never a stain,
Is laid the Sword of Liberty, and the balance dips, O Spain!
III
Summon thy vessels together! great is thy need for these!—Cristobal Colon, Vizcaya, Oquendo, and Maria Terese—
Let them be strong and many, for a vision I had by night,
That the ancient wrongs thou hast done the world came howling to the fight:
From the New-World's shores they gathered, Inca and Aztec slain,
To the Cuban shot but yesterday, and our own dead seamen, Spain!
278
IV
Summon thy ships together, gather a mighty fleet!For a strong, young Nation is arming, that never hath known defeat.
Summon thy ships together, there by thy blood-stained sands!
For a shadowy army gathers with manacled feet and hands;
A shadowy host of sorrows and shames, too black to tell,
That reach, with their horrible wounds, for thee to drag thee down to Hell:
A myriad phantoms and spectres, thou warrest against in vain—
Thou art weighed in the Scales and found wanting! the balance of God, O Spain!
May, 1898.
| The poems of Madison Cawein | |