Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AN ODE OF DEDICATION, by HERMANN HAGEDORN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AN ODE OF DEDICATION, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Who would have thought a month of spring
Last Line: Lead on! We come.
Subject(s): April; Spring


I

Who would have thought a month of Spring
Could work so deep a change?
Who would have thought a dream could sting
The dead to new life, quivering,
And shake dull hearts with echoing
Of music new and strange?
The deaf have heard a call,
The scoffers have heard a cry.
Freedom moaned, "Give help! I fall!
Brother, your hand! I die!"
The dumb have heard and spoken,
The sluggards have stirred;
A word, a dream, has broken
The sleep of the sepulchered!
Through the storm and the dark
Freedom flashed a spark,
And we who love her name
Burst into flame,
And came!

Who would have thought that April days
Could work such conjury?
Up from the crowded towns ablaze,
Up from the green hills, like a haze
Slow-rising to some magic lay's
Unearthly harmony --
Walls and resplendent spires
Have arisen, and stand!
A place of faint, far choirs
And chimes and candle-fires,
A month of new desires
Has made a noisy land.
A place of prayer and search,
A house of God, a church!

Lo, how the spires ascend!
Lo, how the arches rise!
Lo, how the pinnacles pierce the clouds
To melt their glow with the sky's!
What miracle, Wyoming?
What high roof overspreads,
Kansas, your waving fields,
New York, your hurrying heads?
What roof strains to the stars
Over hill, over plain?
What Gothic glory covers you both,
California, Maine?
In Florida, in Idaho,
The crystal walls aspire;
In Oregon, in Delaware,
Sings low the faint, far choir.
The valleys feel a sacred stir
In every leaf and clod;
And from every mountain, every hill,
The pillars loom up to God.

II

Who said, "It is a booth where doves are sold"?
Who said, "It is a money-changers' cave"?
Silence to such forever, and behold!
It is a vast cathedral, and its nave
And dim-lit transept and broad aisles are filled
With a great nation's millions, on their knees
With new devotion and high fervor thrilled
Offering silver and heart's-ease
And love and life and all sweet, temporal things,
Still to keep bright
The steady light
That stifles in the wake of kings!

A market-place! they cried?
A lotus-land? They lied!
It is a great cathedral, not with hands
Upraised, but by the spirit's mute commands
Uplifted by the spirit, wall and spire,
To house a nation's purified desire!
A church! Where in hushed fervor stand
The children of contending races,
Forgetting feud and fatherland --
A hundred million lifted faces.

III

Once more the bugle breaks the April mood.
Once more the march of armies wakes the glen.
Once more the ardor simmers in the blood.
Once more a dream is single lord of men!

From images, from gods of clay,
From idols bright with diadems;
From lips that drew our souls astray
With lure of palaces and gems
And dancing girls and lights and wine
And crowns and power and golden halls;
From pride's penurious Mine and Thine,
Like narrow streets with towering walls;
From painted counterfeits and trash
We turn to the authentic gleam,
Where in the gale and battle thrash
The banners of a holy dream!

Once more a dream is single lord of men!
Yea, we have put aside all little gods!
A dream is captain of the hours again!
And we who were the sod's
Budding and fading children, with no trust
Or treasury beyond the dust,
Feel on our eyes ethereal finger-tips
Burn like a living coal! --
And gasp to feel the angel at our lips
Call and awake the soul!

Once more a dream is single lord of men!
Yea, we will rise and go, and face disaster
And want and wounds and death in some far fen,
Having no king, but a great dream for master! --
To lead us over perilous seas, through trials
Of heart and spirit, through long nights of pain,
Through agonies of fear, and self-denials,
And longing for far friends and comrades slain,
And doubt and hate and utter weariness
And savage hungers and supreme despairs --
Yea, we will go, yea, we will acquiesce,
So at the last our children be the heirs
Of life, not death; of liberty, not bars!
Inheritors not of smooth, ordered things,
But of hot struggle and strong hearts, and stars!
And questing spirits and fierce gales and wings!

Once more a dream is single lord of men!
Yea, we will go and we will close dear doors
Of hope, and many an airy denizen
Of the dear land of Maybe and the shores
Of the enchanted islands of Perchance,
We will face, hand in hand and eye in eye,
Too full of pain for any utterance
Save the last halting murmur, "So -- good-by."
For we will part from other friends than those
Who wear this garment of dissolving flesh
And die for dreams. Yea, softly we will close
The gates of twilit gardens cool and fresh,
Where, with the great immortals amid flowers
And bright immortal birds and billowy trees,
We held high converse and forgot the hours,
Remembering Truth and Beauty. Even to these
Beloved ghosts we also speak farewell.

IV

We will arise and go, not ignorant
Wherefore or at what price we go to sell
This bundle of bright hopes we covenant
Unto a dream. Our price is a new world!
We will go forth and slay the dragon, yea,
With all the banners of the Dream unfurled
We will go forth with swords and songs to slay
This ravager of villages, this old,
Bewitched, confused, malignant coil of hate,
Belching green poisons! In his dungeon-hold
The captive queens in tears and hunger wait.
Immortal Dream! The fettered shall be free!
Yea, not these only! All, who fettered lie!
Oh, Dream, who wilt not let us bow the knee,
Let not this dragon's downfall satisfy
Our reawakened passion for free hands,
Free-ranging and unsaddled spirits, born
To race against the wind on wide sea-strands
And thunder up high glens! Oh, silver horn,
Calling us forth, help us remember, yea,
Even now help us remember, while the Snake
Sprawls yet unconquered on the world's highway
And hills and cities to his roaring shake,
Help us remember that the high crusade
Whereon we here embark calls forth the free
In hosts with spears and flaunting flags arrayed,
Not for one dragon's end, one victory,
One last great war, but to unending war
Without, within, till God's white torch, supreme,
Melt the last chain; and the last dungeon-door
Swing slowly wide to the triumphant dream!

God, who gavest men eyes
God, who gavest men heart
To see a dream;
To follow the Gleam;
God, who gavest men stars
To find heaven by;
God, who madest men glad
At need to die;
Lord, from the hills again
We hear thy drum!
God, who lovest free men,
God, who lovest free men,
God, who lovest free men,
Lead on! We come.





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