The Little Book of Modern Verse | Page 8

signals to
Alaskan seas
That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep
To
fling their icebergs thundering from the steep,
And Mariposa through
the purple calms
Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms
Where
East and West are met, --
A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set
To
say that East and West are twain,
With different loss and gain:
The
Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet.
IV
Alas! what sounds are these that come
Sullenly over the Pacific seas,
--
Sounds of ignoble battle, striking dumb
The season's
half-awakened ecstasies?
Must I be humble, then,
Now when my
heart hath need of pride?
Wild love falls on me from these sculptured
men;
By loving much the land for which they died
I would be
justified.
My spirit was away on pinions wide
To soothe in praise of
her its passionate mood
And ease it of its ache of gratitude.
Too
sorely heavy is the debt they lay
On me and the companions of my
day.
I would remember now
My country's goodliness, make sweet
her name.
Alas! what shade art thou
Of sorrow or of blame
Liftest
the lyric leafage from her brow,
And pointest a slow finger at her
shame?
V
Lies! lies! It cannot be! The wars we wage
Are noble, and our battles
still are won
By justice for us, ere we lift the gage.
We have not
sold our loftiest heritage.
The proud republic hath not stooped to
cheat
And scramble in the market-place of war;
Her forehead

weareth yet its solemn star.
Here is her witness: this, her perfect son,

This delicate and proud New England soul
Who leads despised
men, with just-unshackled feet,
Up the large ways where death and
glory meet,
To show all peoples that our shame is done,
That once
more we are clean and spirit-whole.
VI
Crouched in the sea-fog on the moaning sand
All night he lay,
speaking some simple word
From hour to hour to the slow minds that
heard,
Holding each poor life gently in his hand
And breathing on
the base rejected clay
Till each dark face shone mystical and grand

Against the breaking day;
And lo, the shard the potter cast away

Was grown a fiery chalice crystal-fine,
Fulfilled of the divine
Great
wine of battle wrath by God's ring-finger stirred.
Then upward, where
the shadowy bastion loomed
Huge on the mountain in the wet sea
light,
Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed,
Bloomed,
burst, and scattered down its deadly seed, --
They swept, and died
like freemen on the height,
Like freemen, and like men of noble breed;

And when the battle fell away at night
By hasty and contemptuous
hands were thrust
Obscurely in a common grave with him
The
fair-haired keeper of their love and trust.
Now limb doth mingle with
dissolved limb
In nature's busy old democracy
To flush the
mountain laurel when she blows
Sweet by the Southern sea,
And
heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose: --
The untaught hearts
with the high heart that knew
This mountain fortress for no earthly
hold
Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old
Of spiritual wrong,

Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong,
Expugnable but by a
nation's rue
And bowing down before that equal shrine
By all men
held divine,

Whereof his band and he were the most holy sign.
VII
O bitter, bitter shade!
Wilt thou not put the scorn
And instant tragic

question from thine eye?
Do thy dark brows yet crave
That swift
and angry stave --
Unmeet for this desirous morn --
That I have
striven, striven to evade?
Gazing on him, must I not deem they err

Whose careless lips in street and shop aver
As common tidings, deeds
to make his cheek
Flush from the bronze, and his dead throat to speak?

Surely some elder singer would arise,
Whose harp hath leave to
threaten and to mourn
Above this people when they go astray.
Is
Whitman, the strong spirit, overworn?
Has Whittier put his yearning
wrath away?
I will not and I dare not yet believe!
Though furtively
the sunlight seems to grieve,
And the spring-laden breeze
Out of the
gladdening west is sinister
With sounds of nameless battle overseas;

Though when we turn and question in suspense
If these things be
indeed after these ways,
And what things are to follow after these,

Our fluent men of place and consequence
Fumble and fill their
mouths with hollow phrase,
Or for the end-all of deep arguments

Intone their dull commercial liturgies --
I dare not yet believe! My
ears are shut!
I will not hear the thin satiric praise
And muffled
laughter of our enemies,
Bidding us never sheathe our valiant sword

Till we have changed our birthright for a gourd
Of wild pulse
stolen from a barbarian's hut;
Showing how wise it is to cast away

The symbols of our spiritual sway,
That so our hands with better ease

May wield the driver's whip and grasp the jailer's keys.
VIII
Was it for this our fathers kept the law?
This crown shall crown their
struggle and their ruth?
Are we the eagle nation Milton saw

Mewing its mighty youth,
Soon to possess the mountain winds of
truth,
And be a swift familiar of the sun
Where aye before God's
face his trumpets run?
Or have we but the talons and the maw,
And
for the abject likeness of our heart
Shall some less lordly bird be set
apart?
Some gross-billed