Panama and Other Poems Narrative and Occasional :: :: University of Virginia Library

To Satan, not to Jesus, must we kneel,
If backward from the barbarous brunt we reel;
Rear we our altars and reserve our dread,
Not for the Lord of Love, but Lord of Lead!
Let all mankind this grapple sternly teach
To see the immortal in the mortal breach!
Here's more than clash of Germany and France;
Is Love a law, or stands the world at chance?
What Christ hath said, or what the Hun hath wrought,
In Europe to the bloody test is brought.
When towns are ashes, and the child outraged,
Is God's mild Son in such a wrack engaged?

Or must that wistful dawn ne'er wax to noon,
Be but the shifting sorrow of the moon;
Yon unavailing goddess, vainly high,
Fain to redeem, yet fated to descry?
The German breaks the cross of Christ in twain,
The new Goth burns the olden Gothic fane;
A panorama rolls of cries and fire,
Attila is re-risen from his pyre!
If these prevail to blacken and to blot,
Let ailing Faith in this wide grave-yard rot!
And Force triumphant, whom no pity bars,
Move now the sun in heaven and all the stars!
Here Satan once from heavenly rampart hurled,
Renews the strife and dares embroil a world!
Roaming unsatisfied he tempts again
Battle eternal on an earthly plain.
He brings a mind unchanged, untaught to yield,
And on his brow the thunder-scar, unhealed!
Behind this horde his legions dispossessed
Murmur with injuries yet unredressed.
Defeated fiends this human warfare wage,
And disinherited Archangels rage.

Better the issue joined, proclaimed the cause,
Than militant, intolerable pause!
Too long the earth hath wavered to and fro;
For ever now into the balance throw
The Lords of Heaven against the Lords of Hell
In irremediable, fierce farewell!
With but one lightning is this thunder rife;
Shall man in Force or Faith discover Life?