Poems with Fables in Prose By Frederic Herbert Trench |
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 | Poems with Fables in Prose |  |
III
The herd of glaciers from these brooks has run;
Huge boulders mark the sway
Of their moraines, rude confines of a day.
Through the same gates, fore-goers of the Hun,
Goth, Carthaginian, pressed and passed away.
We now, the riper peoples, rightly sure
We must withstand the harsh and immature,
The bitter-hearted, toss'd from dream to dream,
Fiercely unstable—in all things extreme—
These overlordship-seekers; we intent
That the spirit of every folk shall take its bent
Sunward, and wayward in experiment
Adventure,—each small nation stand uncurbed—
We shall put down the aggressors, unperturbed. . . .
What is life's enemy? Not they
But the sense of human life's futility.
The vainness of ourselves, as of our foes—
To that swift passage what can Man oppose,
Who, brawler between two lights, God and Death—
Sun-marshall'd and moon-tended—journeyeth?
What natures clear, enduring, can
Enter the hot and childish discord, Man?
Flowing or floating—what of worth can be
Establish'd?
Huge boulders mark the sway
Of their moraines, rude confines of a day.
Through the same gates, fore-goers of the Hun,
Goth, Carthaginian, pressed and passed away.
We now, the riper peoples, rightly sure
We must withstand the harsh and immature,
The bitter-hearted, toss'd from dream to dream,
Fiercely unstable—in all things extreme—
These overlordship-seekers; we intent
That the spirit of every folk shall take its bent
118
Adventure,—each small nation stand uncurbed—
We shall put down the aggressors, unperturbed. . . .
What is life's enemy? Not they
But the sense of human life's futility.
The vainness of ourselves, as of our foes—
To that swift passage what can Man oppose,
Who, brawler between two lights, God and Death—
Sun-marshall'd and moon-tended—journeyeth?
What natures clear, enduring, can
Enter the hot and childish discord, Man?
Flowing or floating—what of worth can be
Establish'd?
Courage, Awareness, the pois'd Soul.
The rooted forest-people's polity
Profound; of forest verdure that stands true
And rooted in its own slopes' golden bowl
Spreads free. Here, every happy mead
Hath windflowers of a different hue;
And sun-born Love, the mountain flower, is bred,
And, family by starry family,
Spreads chalices, whereof each petal young
Is a new life: fresh Awareness—tenderly swung
And diffused, as moveth a breeze over grasses and trees—
Of more: all other men's lives, all other men's ease. . . .
Guard we this new Soul against tyrannies!
The soul is end enough, it nought else is
To come to flower against the precipice.
Yonder in Brescia bronze-wing'd Victory
Doth still in her subalpine temple stand,
Holding a vanish'd shield beneath her hand:
Her sons will not to the north's menace yield.
Rather than live unworthy of their land
Some will forgo existences and fames,—
Theirs will be written with the unknown names
Inscribed for ever on the vanish'd shield;
The viewless shield itself, their souls shall be!
The rooted forest-people's polity
Profound; of forest verdure that stands true
And rooted in its own slopes' golden bowl
Spreads free. Here, every happy mead
Hath windflowers of a different hue;
And sun-born Love, the mountain flower, is bred,
And, family by starry family,
Spreads chalices, whereof each petal young
Is a new life: fresh Awareness—tenderly swung
And diffused, as moveth a breeze over grasses and trees—
Of more: all other men's lives, all other men's ease. . . .
Guard we this new Soul against tyrannies!
119
To come to flower against the precipice.
Yonder in Brescia bronze-wing'd Victory
Doth still in her subalpine temple stand,
Holding a vanish'd shield beneath her hand:
Her sons will not to the north's menace yield.
Rather than live unworthy of their land
Some will forgo existences and fames,—
Theirs will be written with the unknown names
Inscribed for ever on the vanish'd shield;
The viewless shield itself, their souls shall be!
| Poems with Fables in Prose | |