University of Virginia Library

To stand this night alone with Destiny,
Alone in all the world beneath the stars,
And hold the string that makes the puppets dance,
Is something; but to feel the steadfast will
Deepen, the judgment clear itself, the gaze
Grow keener, all the purpose that was dim
Brighten distinct in the serene still light
Of conquest—that is more; more than all power,
More than lip-homage, more than crowns and thrones,
More than the world; for it is life indeed.
O how the dreams and hopes and plans cohere!
How the great phalanx broadens! Like a wave
It washes Europe, and before its sweep
The lying idols, based on quicksand, shift,
Totter, and fall: strewn with the wreck'd and dead,
It shrieks and gathers up a flashing crest
In act to drown the lingering life of France.
Tide of the Teuton, is it wonderful
The grand old King sees in thy victory
The strength and wrath of God?

Here then I pause,
And (let me whisper it to mine own heart)
I tremble. I have played with fire; behold,
It hath devour'd God's enemy and mine;
And tamely at my bidding croucheth now
With luminous eyes half closed. This fire is Truth,
And by it I shall rise or fall. This fire
Is very God's—I know it; and thus far
God to my keeping hath committed it.
What next? and next? There at my feet lies France,
Bound, stricken, screaming,—yonder, good as dead.
Pluckt of his fangs, the imperial Adder crawls,
Tame as a mouse. I have struck down these twain,
The Liar, and the creature of the Liar;
I have slain these twain with an avenging flame;
And while I stand victorious comes a Voice
Out of the black abysses of the earth
Whereat I pause and tremble. 'Tis so easy
To cast down Idols! The tide so pitilessly
Washes each name from the waste sands of time!
'Twas yestermorn the Man of Mysteries fell—
Whose turn comes next? . . .
From Italy to the blue Baltic rolls
A voice, a wind, a murmur in the air,
A tone full of the sense of wind and waters
And the faint whispers from ethereal fields,
A cry of anguish and of mystery
Echoed by the Volcano in whose depths
The monarchs one by one have disappeared.
And men who hear it answer back one word,
‘Liberty!’—Cities echo through their streets;
The word is wafted on from vale to vale:
Heart-drowsy Albion answers with a cheer,
Feeble yet clear; the great wild West refrains;
Italy thunders, and Helvetia
Blows the wild horn high up among her hills;
France, wounded, dying, stretch'd beneath my feet,
Gnaws at her bonds and shrieks in mad accord
(For she indeed first gave the thing a name),
And even the wily Russian, with his yoke
Prest on innumerable groaning necks,
Sleek like the serpent, smooths his frosty cheek
To listen, fiercely smiling hisses back
The strange word ‘Liberty!’ between his teeth,
And shivers with a bitterer sense of cold
Than ever seized him in that lonely realm
O'er which he paceth hungry and alone.
What is this thing that men call ‘Liberty’?
Not force, not tumult, not the wind and rain
And tempest, not the spirit of mere Storm,
Not Earthquake, not the Lightning, not swift Fire,
Not one of these; but mightier far than these,—
The everlasting principle of things,
Out of whose silence issue all, the rock
Whereon the mountain and the crater stand,
The adamantine pillars of the Earth,
Deep-based beneath the ever-varying air
And under the wild changes of the Sea,
The Inevitable, the Unchangeable,
The secret law, the impulse, and the thought,
Whereby men live and grow.

Then I, this night
As ever, dare with a man's eyes and soul
Hold by this thing whereof the foolish rave,
And cry, ‘In God's name, peace, ye winds and waves,
Ye froths and bubbles on the sea, ye voices
Haunting the fitful region of the air!
God is above ye all, and next to God
The Son and Holy Spirit, and beneath
These twain the great anointed Kings of Earth,
And underneath the Kings the Wise of Wit,
And underneath the Wise the merely Strong,
And least of all, clay in the hands of all,
The base, the miserable, and the weak.’
What, then, is this that ye name ‘Liberty’?
There is evermore a higher. Not like waves
Beating about in a waste sea are men,
But great, small, fair, foul, strong, weak, miserable;—
And Liberty is law creating law
Wherein each corporal member of the world
Filleth his function in the place ordain'd.
Child at the knee, look in thy mother's face!
Boy-student, reverence the philosopher!
Clown, till the earth, and let the market thrive!
Citizen, doff to beauty and to grace,
To antique fame and holy ancestry!
Nobles, blood purified from running long,
Circle of sanctity, surround the King!
King, stand on the bare height and raise thine eyes,
For there sits God above thee, reverencing
The perfect Mirror of the soul of things,
Wherein He gazes calmly evermore,
And knows Himself divine!

Thus stands for ever
The eternal Order like a goodly Tree,
The root of which is deep within the soil.
And lo! the wind and rain are beating on it,
And lightning rends its branches; yet anon
It hangs in gorgeous blossom still-renewed,
And shoots its topmost twig up through the cloud
To touch the changeless stars. Herr Democrat
Comes with his blunt rough axe, and at its root
Strikes shrieking; the earth's parrots echo him;
Blow follows blow; the air reverberates;
But the Tree stands. Come winds and waves and lightnings,
Come axe-wielders, come ye iconoclasts,
And spend your strength in vain. What! ye would stretch
This goodly trunk, this very Iggdrasil,
Down to the dusty level of your lives,
Would strew the soil with the fair blooms thereof,
Would tear away the succulent leaves and make
A festal chaplet for Silenus' hair,
A drunken garland for the Feast of Fools.
See, yonder blow the branches where the Great
Tremble like ripen'd fruit; yonder the Holy
Gleam in the silvern foliage, sweet and fair;
There just beneath the cloud, most dim in height,
The flowers of monarchy open their buds
And turn their starry faces upward still.
Strike at the root, my little democrat,
Down with them! Down with the whole goodly Tree!
Down even with that fair shoot beyond the cloud,
Down with the unseen bloom of perfect height,
Down with the blossom on the topmost twig,
Down with the light of God!

I compare further
This Order to a Man, body and brain,
Heart, lungs, eyes, feet to stand on, hands to strike.
The King is to the realm what conscience is
To manhood: the true statesman is the brain;
And under these subsist, greater and less,
The members of the body politic.
Behold now, this alone is majesty:
The incarnate Conscience of the people, fixed
Beyond the body, higher than the brain,
Yet perfect fruit of both,—the higher sense
That flashes back through all the popular frame
The intuitions and the lights divine
Whereby the world is guided under God.
Nor are all Kings ancestral, though these same
Are highest. Yonder in the stormy West
The plain man Lincoln rose to majesty,
Incarnated the conscience and the will
Of the strong generation, moved to his end,
Struck, triumph'd in the name of Conscience, fell,
And like a sun that sets in bloody light,
In dying darken'd half earth's continents.
. . . What, art thou there, old Phantom of the Red?
Urge on thy dreadful legions, for in truth
There is no face in France this day with light
So troublous to the eyes of victory.
O brave one, wert thou France's will and soul,
Why we might tremble. Let there rise a land,
As strong in conscience and as stern in soul
As we have been to follow a living truth,
And it might slay us even as we have slain
Imperial France and the Republic. Now
Supreme we stand, our symbol being the Sword,
Our King the hand that wields; in that one hand
I strike, all strike, yea every Teuton strikes.
Reason and conscience knitted in accord
Are deathless, and must overcome the world.
The higher law will shape them. I believe
There is evermore a higher!