Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BREATH ON THE OAT, by JOSEPH RUSSELL TAYLOR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BREATH ON THE OAT, by                    
First Line: Free are the muses, and where freedom is
Last Line: Uncaptured and unflying, the wings of song.
Subject(s): Peace; Spanish-american War (1898)


FREE are the Muses, and where freedom is
They follow, as the thrushes follow spring,
Leaving the old lands songless there behind;
Parnassus disenchanted suns its woods,
Empty of every nymph; wide have they flown;
And now on new sierras think to set
Their wandering court, and thrill the world anew,
Where the Republic babbling waits its speech;
For but the prelude of its mighty song
As yet has sounded. Therefore, would I woo
Apollo to the land I love, 't is vain;
Unknown he spies on us; and if my verse
Ring not the empyrean round and round,
'T is that the feeble oat is few of stops.
The noble theme awaits the nobler bard.
Then how all air will quire to it, and all
The great dead listen, America! -- For lo,
Diana of the nations hath she lived
Remote, and hoarding her own happiness
In her own land, the land that seemed her first
An exile, where her bark was cast away,
Till maiden grew the backward-hearted child,
And on that sea whose waves were memories
Turned her young shoulder, looked with steadfast eyes
Upon her wilderness, her woods, her streams;
Inland she ran, and gathering virgin joy
Followed her shafts afar from humankind.
And if sometimes her isolation drooped
And yearning woke in her, she put it forth
With a high boast and with a sick disdain;
Actaeons fleeing, into antlers branched
The floating tresses of her fancy, and far
Her arrows smote them with a bleeding laugh.
O vain and virgin, O the fool of love!
Now children not her own are at her knee.
For stricken by her path lay one that vexed
Her maiden calm; she reached a petulant hand;
And the old nations drew sharp breath and looked.
The two-edged sword, how came it in her hand?
The sword that slays the holder if he withhold,
That none can take, or having taken drop,
The sword is in thy hand, America!
The wrath of God, that fillets thee with lightnings,
America! Strike then; the sword departs.
Ah God, once more may men crown drowsy days
With glorious death, upholding a great cause!
I deemed it fable; not of them am I.
Yet if they loved thee on the loud May-day
Who with unexultant thunder wreathed the flag,
With thunder and with victory, if they
Who on the third most famous of our Fourths
Along the seaboard mountains swept, a storm
Unleashed, whose tread spurned not the wrecks of Spain,
If these thy sons have loved thee, and have set
Santiago and Manila like new stars
Crowding thy field of blue, new terror perched
Like eagles on thy banners, oh, not less
I love thee, who but prattle in the prime
Of birds of passage over river and wood
Thine also, piping little charms to lure,
Uncaptured and unflying, the wings of song.





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