 | The Last Crusade |  |
15
THE RANSOM OF LIBERTY.
Ours are the very greatest things, the dearest,
Bought at a monstrous price
By centuried sacrifice;
But those that seek their God and draw the nearest
Are sifted by fierce flame
To read the Holy Name,
And pass through many a doom to Paradise.
Prerogatives, that never can be lost,
Are seized by crushing Edom
And wrung from every death at awful cost;
Only the brave, the fit, the tempest-tost,
Stand in the gates of Freedom.
Bought at a monstrous price
By centuried sacrifice;
But those that seek their God and draw the nearest
Are sifted by fierce flame
To read the Holy Name,
And pass through many a doom to Paradise.
Prerogatives, that never can be lost,
Are seized by crushing Edom
And wrung from every death at awful cost;
Only the brave, the fit, the tempest-tost,
Stand in the gates of Freedom.
Progress is paid for, not one step that faileth
To ask its ghastly tolls,
The sweated blood of souls;
No prayer, no bribe, no blandishment availeth
To elude the dreadful pangs
Whereon Creation hangs,
Or baulk the penance for the prize and goals.
And Liberty, the grandest of God's boons,
By broken shrine and transom,
Grim glaring nights and darkness of mid noons
And bitter travail of the suns and moons,
Must give in full the ransom.
To ask its ghastly tolls,
The sweated blood of souls;
No prayer, no bribe, no blandishment availeth
To elude the dreadful pangs
Whereon Creation hangs,
Or baulk the penance for the prize and goals.
And Liberty, the grandest of God's boons,
By broken shrine and transom,
Grim glaring nights and darkness of mid noons
And bitter travail of the suns and moons,
Must give in full the ransom.
In terror-stricken Belgium, France, and Flanders,
With old-time beauty sweet
And tread of saintly feet,
Ravin the red beasts, crucifying branders;
The elect to make men strong
Must sing death's evensong,
And pave with lives new Paradise's street.
Not otherwise, at length, we hardly gain
The broad, the eternal charters,
By utter anguish of all stress and strain;
Earth yields fresh fruits by passion and by pain,
The seeds of time are martyrs.
With old-time beauty sweet
And tread of saintly feet,
16
The elect to make men strong
Must sing death's evensong,
And pave with lives new Paradise's street.
Not otherwise, at length, we hardly gain
The broad, the eternal charters,
By utter anguish of all stress and strain;
Earth yields fresh fruits by passion and by pain,
The seeds of time are martyrs.
| The Last Crusade | |