OUR world beyond a year of dread Has paled like Babylon or Rome. Never for all the blood was shed Shall life return to it as home. No peace shall e'er that dream recall; The avalanche is yet to fall. Laugh, you whose dreams were outlawed things. The sceptre from the tyrant slips. Earth's kings are met by those wild kings Who swept through the Apocalypse. Ere the first awful hand be stayed, The second shall have clutched the blade. On the white horse is one who rides Until earth's empires are o'erthrown, And a red rider yet abides Whose trumpet call is still unblown, Whose battlefield shall be the grave Either for master or for slave. Once in a zodiac of years Earth stirs beneath her heaving crust, And high and low, unheeding tears, Are equal levelled with the dust. Laugh, slave, the coming terror brings Thee to that brotherhood with kings. Laugh too, you warriors of God, The tyrants of the spirit fail. The mitred head shall no more nod And multitudes of men be pale. When empires topple here below The heavens which are their shadows go. If the black horse's rider reign, Or the pale horse's rider fire His burning arrows, with disdain Laugh. You have come to your desire, To the last test which yields the right To walk amid the halls of light. You, who have made of earth your star, Cry out, indeed, for hopes made vain: For only those can laugh who are The strong Initiates of Pain, Who know that mighty god to be Sculptor of immortality. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SEVEN TWILIGHTS: 4 by CONRAD AIKEN CONTRA MORTEM: THE CHILD'S BEING by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE PRODIGAL SON by DAVID IGNATOW A FLORIDA SUNDAY by SIDNEY LANIER ON CARPACCIO'S PICTURE: THE DREAM OF ST. URSALA; SONNET by AMY LOWELL DOMESDAY BOOK: ARCHIBALD LOWELL by EDGAR LEE MASTERS DOMESDAY BOOK: MRS. GREGORY WENNER by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |