Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WELCOME HOME, by PERCY STICKNEY GRANT


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WELCOME HOME, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Up the vast harbor, goal of millions of dreamers
Last Line: A brotherhood complete.
Subject(s): Homecoming; World War I; First World War


I

Up the vast harbor, goal of millions of dreamers,
-- Hail, Liberty, facing the dawn with thy flame! --
Past Ellis Island where workmen await deportation,
Sail the khaki-clad, valiant youths of the nation
-- God help below, the basketed, mad, blind, lame!
Speed with hilarious decks the crafty hulls of huge steamers;
Freighted with forms of the future they come.
Welcome home! Welcome home! Welcome home!

Sirens' crescendos crack the skies
Our joys to advertise.
Every engineer
Gives a steam-whistle cheer.
The plying ferry-boats
Hoot from happy throats.
The liners in their docks
Join the deafening shocks --
With hollow, vibrant basso drum
"They come! They come! They come!"
What speech, except just noise,
Can welcome back our boys?

The mighty city awakes
And laughs, as its pillow it shakes --
"The boys are back, thousands are landing,
Home-folks, crowded on wharves, are standing;
Travel-stained, hungry, humbly demanding,
At most, incredible embraces,
At least, a glimpse of dear faces."

O, how far it sounds!
Leaping the land like hounds,
Over prairie and mountains it bounds:
Thrilling with tear-swept joys
Mothers unweaned from their boys;
Calling to ranches and farms --
"The child who faced war's alarms
Now hastens to your arms";
While echoes up torrent-torn canons
Gladden home-kept, luckless companions.

It calls in tenement houses,
Until the worker arouses
From dreams that the mill-whistle lashes,
Snaps and snarls, like a whip, till she dashes
Half washed, half fed, with scant clothes
To the brutal machine she loathes.
Ah: this is no whistle, no dream at all.
This is a lover's call --
A husband, brother, sweetheart, son,
Whose distant duty is done.

Out of expected death,
Out of self's free surrender,
Out of war's poisonous breath,
Destruction's last defender,
Return they again to life,
Waked, awed with wonder,
To mother, or maid or wife,
Graver but finer and fonder.

II

Where have I heard before this blend of passionate voices,
This high, monotonous scream,
Like being's eternal stream
Fleeing death
With deep breath
And all song by which triumph rejoices?
When winter's ice and snow
Melt as spring winds blow,
Down hillsides tumble, in brooks overflow,
Resounds the sleepless monotone
Of Freedom, unshackled, come to her own.
In meadows and marshes and ditches,
Where frogs peep in high and low pitches,
Laugh derisive frost's failure to hold them,
Shriek taunts as soft slimes enfold them,
Day and night,
Dark and light,
There have I heard this call,
Victory's mad antiphonal.
Where yellow grasses turn to green
With sweet violets between;
Where the bright swamp marigold
Guardian moats of water hold --
Skunk-cabbage's lush leaves and pungent smell
Protect its seed in a bronze-flecked shell:
Where in drier places
The sun, a new shade traces,
Gaily hangs flame-tipped columbine,
Up which bees clamber
For honied amber,
And white, starred anemones shine,
There I have heard before this symphony
Of life's victory --
The shouts of those who survive,
The laughter of those left alive.

III

Again exulting victory cries
-- Not from the battlefields of earth,
Whose voices have extinguished mirth --
But chorals that unlock the skies,
Whither our dead arise,
As heroes, saints, martyrs and beauties come,
All heaven sings: "Welcome home!"

The beautiful, the young, the brave
Disease and war have hurried to the grave.
Innumerable armies of the dead
Bend the heaven beneath their tread.
Never did life so much with death converse,
Or stalwart bodies shudder at a hearse.
Never so many brains with fruitless questions burned,
Never so many eyes with tears to heaven turned.
What must the labors of the living be,
Near such beloved, immortal company!

Today ambition cannot be the same
As in the days before death's harvest came.
The great will not be pigmies feeding self,
With eyes for nothing but for fame and pelf.
Greatness is not at ruinous costs to win
And make the best of what should not have been.
Greatness foresees, foretells the dread event,
Creating forces that relieve, prevent.
Remember -- from the beast mankind is sprung,
And still best ways are by some poets sung.
The law of eye for eye and tooth for tooth
Will not turn beasts to brother, lies to truth.
To this rule, then, adhere until the end,
Contribute to mankind more than you spend.
Expense feeds on another's time or blood,
Who gives back most of these is wise, is good.
The workers are no longer slaves, or "hacks,"
And what they say they mean, "Get off our backs!"
So for the living, there is but one creed --
Each for the world, and all for each one's need.

IV

We cannot watch all roads that death may come;
We guard the door, yet death steals in our home.
For thrust or parry with death as we will,
His blow is always last; his "touch" will kill.
No one knows death except those death has taken:
Grief fears to feel lest she to madness waken.
Grief dare not babble of the pangs she feels,
The world runs on; Grief stumbles at its heels;
Builds in her breast a prison for her woes
And through the years a silent jailer goes.
We cannot watch all roads, but one we can --
The birthplace and the fortress, too, of man.
The home at least should save the lives it rears,
While science strives to add to mortal years.
Youth is a pessimist: at life it rails,
Plays with self-slaughter and its sire assails.
To death youth plunges in war's sudden strife,
Before it learns the value of its life.
The fault is with the fathers. Life they know,
But would stay longer at its pleasant show,
Heap up more wealth though famine feed their store,
Deaf to God's threat -- "Your sons must pay the score."
Pride of courage, greed of greater gain,
Hides the high price and the eternal pain.
A tithing of the brains it cost to win
Would have insured our times against this sin,
Had brains sought to supply the needy's dearth,
Nor reddened battlefields to rule the earth.

V

I used to read names in Memorial Hall
Of students who for freedom gave their all,
At Gettysburg or in the Wilderness,
A boy, I gazed and dreamed, but must confess
They seemed like heroes of Achilles' time --
Unlike us, distant, of a race sublime.
But now new names for that famed wall appear
How young, how full of human hopes, how dear!
Saviors of savior nations -- theirs the high course
Of victors over tyranny and force.
Yet one who from my far-off time returns
Must have permission to erect two urns,
Where Bacon's name and Roosevelt's name should be,
Apollo, Mars, in my mythology.

VI

We grow in soul and consciousness
Not merely when we eat, sleep, dress
And pass the time,
But when foes of mankind we meet,
Pray, struggle, starve, nor know retreat.
-- For cowardice is crime.
Where battlefields their terrors hurled,
And where brave thought rebuilds the world,
There soul is born and grows.
So age like youth
Still worships truth,
And deathless spirit shows.
Proud youths who thought your duty done
When you came home,
More glorious duties have outrun.
A vaster heaven you find to dome
The larger would we all demand.
Yes, bigger than our native land,
Where all may have a chance to be
Children of one divinity.
The home you left is not the same,
"What's wrong?" you ask, "Who is to blame?
I left my home a thoughtless boy,
Now a man's powers I would employ.
Some newer need prompts me to ask
No useless job, but a real task.
Yes, France and Belgium to restore,
But to all men give more.
Bestow not only home and food,
But in all hearts true brotherhood.
What's home, except the happiness
Of knowing that your deeds will bless?
A trench -- a prison -- where'er you roam
In God's behalf is home."

VII

Honor the victor! Let arches endure,
Noble as those in Rome,
Though the forms of the dead; the eyes of the poor
Have veiled his joy of home.

Build him a home that can never decay,
In peace or war, in youth or age;
One that will last him a year and a day,
A deathless war to wage.

What is the task can absorb his full powers?
Mankind -- their tears, their prayers --
Quench them, answer them. Life him who cowers;
Cheer him on who dares.

What have we learned in this world of blood?
For soon we may profit by it.
Famine that slays is not lack of food,
But of money to buy it.

The gods -- do they, grieved and weary, nod?
Has a race of old men arisen?
Are our bravest buried beneath the sod?
Are our deepest hearts in prison?

O victory bringing triumphs, breeding fears,
O victor whose lips are dumb!
Do you see no peace in future years,
But terrible days to come?

No! if conquest be not domination,
But adoption of those we defeat
If our toil be a new creation,
A brotherhood complete.





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