Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TRIUMPHUS; OR, THE VANQUISHMENT OF FATE, by WILLIAM STEWARD GORDON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TRIUMPHUS; OR, THE VANQUISHMENT OF FATE, by                    
First Line: I sat upon the sad sea wall
Last Line: Then rise, o soul, and claim thy crown!
Subject(s): Fate; Victory; Destiny


I sat upon the sad sea wall
And heard the night bird's mournful call,

Where an inlet held two hills apart,
As things oft sever heart from heart,

Till chilling currents roll between,
Where once they touched in rapture keen.

The tide was bearing from the sea
Her daily freight of mystery.

The waves leaped up the granite gray,
But backward tumbled in dismay;

Like vanquished legions of the tide
They fell, while others came and died.

And higher rose the water's edge,
And sharper grew the jutting ledge.

One waning star peered through a cloud
Like dying eye from out a shroud,

And saw a fragile, trembling form
Buffeted hard by wave and storm—

An unfledged bird, with piteous call,
Was beating on the cold sea wall.

The scowling cliff it could not scale—
It beat the tide to no avail.

So, like a quivering wretch of fate,
It could but bruise, and bleed, and wait.

SUGGESTION

Next day there tossed upon my mind
That naked bird in cruel wind,

And strangely mingled was its cry,
With all earth's anguish—with the sigh

Of dying saint 'neath Roman rods,
Who fought against satanic odds—

And all the helpless wails and tears
That echo down the vibrant years,

Where gurgling blood and fiendish lust
Make deepest hell but mildly just.

Thus one ill-fated albatross
Seemed linked with every crown and cross.

I must at least find where it lay,
And heap the sand above the clay,

"To teach the cruel sea," I said,
"That Pity is not also dead."

It surely ceased its struggle sore,
And helped to strew the festering shore,

Where larger lives through countless years,
Have traced their epitaph in tears.

EMANCIPATION

But not a trace of wing or limb
Found I among the wreckage grim,

Till, hearing an exultant cry,
I found the victim did not die.

For when the gracious day was born,
The tide rushed out to meet the morn,

The wavelets clapped their hands in glee,
And chased each other back to sea.

With graceful poise and placid breast,
She rode the rushing billows' crest,

Past cliff and gorge, o'er bar and bay,
To the open sea away, away!

'Twas this for which her life was given,
The widening sea her fairest heaven!

MEDITATION

And as I watch the fading glow
Of dying embers, ere I go,

I see this bird, an emblem true,
Of what each victor passes through.

Oft seeming crushed by unseen power,
The victim of an evil hour;

Harassed by fiends without, within,
A bondslave to the powers of sin,

And bound to galling tyranny
Of class—that baneful upas tree.

He seems an ox, and harder driven
When best his bleeding soul has striven.

DEGENERATION

How oft in Olivets like this,
Betrayed by some foul Judas kiss,

A man forgets his soul is free,
And fails to win his Calvary.

He loses heart, and hope, and soul,
And falls with shadow on the goal.

Dull-eyed he plods before the goad,
The fruits of sin his biggest load.

He treads the garden of his soul
And leaves no tender flowret whole.

He feeds on envy, hate, and death,
Till, reeking foul with Bacchus breath,

He bears a soul as grossly void
As ever graced an anthropoid.

ASPIRATION

But haste, O Muse, to bring the news
That every soul has power to choose!

No "checkmate" mars the Moral Plan!
No Fate, but in the mind of man!

For ere the will has sealed his fate,
There still remains a golden gate

To Victory. In wildest wars,
"Ye shall be more than conquerors"

Rings out a slogan for the race—
A heavenly voice of hope and grace.

No night so dark, no sea so wide,
But comes at length the ebbing tide,

When aspirations may take wings
And bear the soul to better things.

EXULTATION

Gaze once again where billows toss
The helpless fledgling albatross—

With cliff and tide and wind at war—
Art thou as frail, or help so far?

My soul seemed once in such a plight
As, struggling through the deep'ning night,

Bold barriers rose on every side
Save where the cold resistless tide

With unseen power still bore me on
Against the cliff. My strength was gone;

And aspirations grand and high
Seemed one by one to droop and die;

Till suddenly I saw a star
Gleam through the lowering clouds afar—

A star more radiant with the years
Dispelling doubts, and quelling fears.

And as I gazed the tide was turned,
My heart with hope now wildly burned,

And led by its entrancing beam
I sail an ever widening stream

Where every faculty of soul
Expands in His divine control.

CONCLUSION

They are the Vanquishers of Fate
Who bravely strive and pray and wait.

For ere his final doom shall fall,
The hosts of heaven shall hear his call,

And rally earth and sky and sea,
All allies for his victory.

The heart heroic will not down
Then rise, O soul, and claim thy crown!




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