 | Odes (1894) |  |
79
A NEW YEAR'S PRAYER
In the blanched night, when all the world lay frore,
And the cold moon, the passionless, looked down
Commiserating man the passion-curst—
Man made in passion and by passion marred—
Through the pale silence, on the New Year's verge,
This prayer fled forth, and trembled up to heaven:—
And the cold moon, the passionless, looked down
Commiserating man the passion-curst—
Man made in passion and by passion marred—
Through the pale silence, on the New Year's verge,
This prayer fled forth, and trembled up to heaven:—
‘O Thou whose dwelling is eternity;
Who seest the hunger and the toil of men,
And how the love of life and wife and babe
Is brother of hate and sire of deeds of death;
Give peace—give peace: peace in our time, O Lord!
Who seest the hunger and the toil of men,
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Is brother of hate and sire of deeds of death;
Give peace—give peace: peace in our time, O Lord!
‘But if we needs must march to peace through war,
Spare not the sowers who amid Thy corn
Mingled the lethal seed of this red flower;
The whirlwind let them reap who sow the wind.
Make terrible Thine arm against all thieves
Whether in mart or on imperial throne;
And scatter with Thy thunder the unjust
Who turn thy pleasance to a wilderness,
To battlefields Thy vineyard, with mailed feet
Trampling the joyous vine of life in blood.
‘Purge and renew this England, once so fair,
When Arthur's knights were armed with nobleness,
Or Alfred's wisdom poised the sacred scales;
Yea, and in later times, when Liberty,
Her crowned and crosiered enemies combating,
Stood proudlier 'stablished by a false king's fall,
Mighty from Milton's pen and Cromwell's sword,
Terribly beauteous, passionately just,
Seared with hell's hate, and in her scars divine.’
Spare not the sowers who amid Thy corn
Mingled the lethal seed of this red flower;
The whirlwind let them reap who sow the wind.
Make terrible Thine arm against all thieves
Whether in mart or on imperial throne;
And scatter with Thy thunder the unjust
Who turn thy pleasance to a wilderness,
To battlefields Thy vineyard, with mailed feet
Trampling the joyous vine of life in blood.
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When Arthur's knights were armed with nobleness,
Or Alfred's wisdom poised the sacred scales;
Yea, and in later times, when Liberty,
Her crowned and crosiered enemies combating,
Stood proudlier 'stablished by a false king's fall,
Mighty from Milton's pen and Cromwell's sword,
Terribly beauteous, passionately just,
Seared with hell's hate, and in her scars divine.’
New Year's Eve, 1892.
| Odes (1894) | |