Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THUS, by HENRY H. CALDWELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THUS, by                    
First Line: Ho, thou of the hate that shall deathless be!
Last Line: In our sails scream the gulls of the sea.
Subject(s): Hate


HO, thou of the hate that shall deathless be!
Thou hast called to us, and we answer thee.
Flung forth is our Word, where the green swells shine
Through the whirling scud of the wind-whipt brine:
To our hand, restored
Are the targe and sword;
In our sails scream the gulls of the sea.

Of Love and of Hate we have naught to say:
No oath is pledged at our hearths today;
The morrow we leave to our spume-dashed keel,
And the shadowy edge of our undimmed steel.
On the bounds of the world
Is a flag unfurled,
And a nation addressed to the fray.

We have lifted our eyes to the muffled morn,
And the wasting flood of a moon outworn;
We have marked the pale pressage astir on high,
That speaks to the living, who shortly die.
Yet our name is old
As the surges cold,
And our sires to the paean were born.
Nothing have we with the humbled knee,
The shame of the freeman, no longer free;
And our Word shall abide, yield it honor or woe,
The same to the new, as the ancient foe:

To our hand, restored
Are the targe and sword;
In our sails scream the gulls of the sea.





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