I SONG, from thy wealth, far passing richest guess, Give us the things we are poor in, not the things Life spawns for ever with a rank excess. Thou that canst fiercely bless, Take us to founts of power, the unchoked springs Of the world's wondrousness. We need thy boons. We are shaken with storms of fate. And now, while we await The all-calm sky To-morrow never brings, The tempest and long thunder of Yesterday Have not quite trailed away The last fringe of the midnight of their wings. War smote us hard, and the hard blows of peace Buffet our laden shoulders without cease. And busy is hate, whose wanton sickle cuts Our ripening hopes untimely evermore: And diligent is the furtive hand that shuts On Truth an iron door. Nor rest they oft, being troublously awake Throughout the Earth, who, in a blear light, stir The Cauldrons of Confusion, whence are borne Hither and thither the sick fumes that make Void minds their dwelling, and blur The countenance of the morn. And from that region whose slow waters roam To land-locked seas, or wed the Arctic foam -- From that huge cradle and grave of Czars, where rose The towers of tyranny o'er a people's woes -- Comes a hoarse sound upon the east wind flung, The voice of that strange child whom Havoc bore, But who from old Despairs is likewise sprung: Their baleful daughter, joyless, yet how young! -- Sitting as one becrowned On a vast burial mound, That hides the undirged, mown in the whirlwind's roar, When, with blind Hates hemmed round, Pity no longer dared to have a tongue. II Therefore, O Song, beholding all the ill That scatters wide its plague-seed to pollute This faltering morrow of the battle-gloom, We in whose ears the sound of tumult shrill Was idle at times as a remote dispute That seems the clash of shadows; we to whom Ages whose last words were of feuds and spoils Bequeathed a monstrous ravelment unblest, Which we must needs hand on (O dire bequest) Curst with new knots and coils; We that from War now earn such acrid fruit, And from bleak triumph the wan flower whose doom Is to lack nought but scent and colour and bloom; We whom the wrangle we call peace embroils With dissonance never mute; We ask that thou, whose torch the gross murk foils But for a season -- we ask that thou fulfil, In this hurt day, that still Bears on its bosom fewer flowers than scars, One errand, amid such gods as wax or wane, One service, thy least vain, To us fond flutterers 'twixt delight and pain. While Chance with crude touch mars The yet brave shape of Life, -- nay, till Life's toils, And the sweet fraudulence of its dreams, be o'er; Till all the base or noble dreamers must Accept without disdain The equality and fraternity of the dust, Where in like quiet are lulled the note that jars And the pure music faultless to its core, -- Till then, great Mother, as oft-times heretofore, Through all our clamour and blare and greed and lust, Remind us of the stars. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ANNE by LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE THE PRINCESS: [BUGLE] SONG by ALFRED TENNYSON AN ESCAPE by LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE TO IRON-FOUNDERS AND OTHERS by GORDON BOTTOMLEY THE STREAM OF LIFE by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT VERSES: THE SECOND BOY by JOHN BYROM BLOOM THAT NEVER DIES by MARTHA C. COCHRAN |