The New Morning | Page 2

to the
height of a brighter dominion,
Kindling the hope of the prophets to
flame,
Calling aloud on the deep as it came,
_Cleave me a way for an army with banners.
I am His Liberty. That is
my name._
Know you the meaning of all they are doing?
Know you the light that
their soul is pursuing?
Know you the might of the world they are
making,
This nation of nations whose heart is awaking?
What is
this mingling of peoples and races?
Look at the wonder and joy in
their faces!
Look how the folds of the union are spreading!
Look,
for the nations are come to their wedding.
How shall the folk of our
tongue be afraid of it?
England was born of it. England was made of
it,
Made of this welding of tribes into one,
This marriage of
pilgrims that followed the sun!
Briton and Roman and Saxon were

drawn
By winds of this Pentecost, out of the dawn,
Westward, to
make her one people of many;
But here is a union more mighty than
any.
Know you the soul of this deep exultation?
Know you the
word that goes forth to this nation?
_I am the breath of God. I am His Liberty.
Let there be light over all
His creation._
Over this Continent, wholly united,
They that were foemen in Europe
are plighted.
Here, in a league that our blindness and pride
Doubted
and flouted and mocked and denied,
Dawns the Republic, the
laughing, gigantic
Europe, united, beyond the Atlantic.
That is
America, speaking one tongue,
Acting her epics before they are sung,

Driving her rails from the palms to the snow,
Through States that
are greater than Emperors know,
Forty-eight States that are empires
in might,
But ruled by the will of one people tonight,
Nerved as one
body, with net-works of steel,
Merging their strength in the one
Commonweal,
Brooking no poverty, mocking at Mars,
Building
their cities to talk with the stars.
Thriving, increasing by myriads
again
Till even in numbers old Europe may wane.
How shall a son
of the England they fought
Fail to declare the full pride of his thought,

Stand with the scoffers who, year after year,
Bring the Republic
their half-hidden sneer?
Now, as in beauty she stands at our side,

Who shall withhold the full gift of his pride?
Not the great England
who knows that her son,
Washington, fought her, and Liberty won.

England, whose names like the stars in their station,
Stand at the foot
of that world's Declaration,--
Washington, Livingston, Langdon, she
claims them,
It is her right to be proud when she names them,

Proud of that voice in the night as it came,
Tossing the flags of the
nations to flame:
_I am the breath of God. I am His laughter.
I am His Liberty. That is
my name._

Flags, in themselves, are but rags that are dyed.
Flags, in that wind,
are like nations enskied.
See, how they grapple the night as it rolls

And trample it under like triumphing souls.
Over the city that never
knew sleep,
Look at the riotous folds as they leap.
Thousands of
tri-colors, laughing for France,
Ripple and whisper and thunder and
dance;
Thousands of flags for Great Britain aflame
Answer their
sisters in Liberty's name.
Belgium is burning in pride overhead.

Poland is near, and her sunrise is red.
Under and over, and fluttering
between,
Italy burgeons in red, white, and green.
See, how they
climb like adventurous flowers,
Over the tops of the terrible towers....

_There, in the darkness, the glories are mated.
There, in the
darkness, a world is created.
There, in this Pentecost, streaming on
high.
There, with a glory of stars in the sky.
There the broad flag of
our union and liberty
Rides the proud night-wind and tyrannies die._
ON THE WESTERN FRONT
(_1916_)
I.
I found a dreadful acre of the dead,
Marked with the only sign on
earth that saves.
The wings of death were hurrying overhead,
The
loose earth shook on those unquiet graves;
For the deep gun-pits, with quick stabs of flame,
Made their own
thunders of the sunlit air;
Yet, as I read the crosses, name by name,

_Mort pour la France_, it seemed that peace was there;
Sunlight and
peace, a peace too deep for thought,
The peace of tides that underlie
our strife,
The peace with which the moving heavens are fraught,

The peace that is our everlasting life.
The loose earth shook. The very hills were stirred.
The silence of the
dead was all I heard.
II.

We, who lie here, have nothing more to pray.
To all your praises we
are deaf and blind.
We may not even know if you betray
Our hope,
to make earth better for mankind.
Only our silence, in the night, shall grow
More silent, as the stars
grow in the sky;
And, while you deck our graves, you shall not know

How many scornful legions pass you by.
For we have heard you say (when we were living)
That some small
dream of good would "cost too much."
But when the foe struck, we
have watched you giving,
And seen you move the mountains with
one touch.
What can be done, we know. But, have no fear!
If you fail now, we
shall not see or hear.
VICTORY
(Written after