How deftly does the gardener blend
This rose and that
To bud a new creation,
More gorgeous and more beautiful
Than any parent portion,
And so,
I trace within my warring blood
The tributary sources,
They potently commingle
And sweep
With new-born forces!
Some day
I shall be glad that it was mine to be
A dark fore-runner of a race burgeoning;
I then shall know
The secret of life’s Calvary,
And bless the thorns
That wound me!
When I rise above the earth,
And look down on the things that fetter me,
I beat my wings upon the air,
Or tranquil lie,
Surge after surge of potent strength
Like incense comes to me
When I rise up above the earth
And look down upon the things that fetter me.
The faint lose faith
When in the tomb their all is laid,
And there returns
No echoing of weal or woe.
The strong hope on,
They see the clods close over head,
The grass grow green,
No word is said,
And yet—
A little world within the world
Are we,
Daily our hearts’ high yearnings fade,
Are buried!
New ones are made—
Are crucified!
And yet—
The hour is big with sooth and sign, with errant men at war,
While blood of alien, friend, and foe imbues the land afar,
And we, with sable faces pent, move with the vanguard line,
Shod with a faith that Springtime keeps, and all the stars opine.
Though I should weep until the judgment,
How would it serve—
Brave men are fighting, women speed them,
’Tis a day
Of crucial conflict!
My son, sometimes it seems I’d rather hold
You safe beneath my heart
Than send you forth!
But lo! The sun is red and weaker children go!
Though I should weep until the judgment,
How would it serve!
I’ll close my eyes and smile, O Son of Mine,
Your cause is kingly!
Step proud and confident, worthy your mother;
Be firm and brave, O Son of Mine, be strong,
For terror waxeth,
Speed swift away,
Though I should weep until the judgment …
There’s music in the measured tread
Of those returning from the dead
Like scattered flowers from a plain
So lately crimson, with the slain.
No more the sound of shuffled feet
Shall mark the poltroon on the street,
Nor shifting, sodden, downcast eye
Reveal the man afraid to die.
They shall have paid full, utterly
The price of peace across the sea,
When, with uplifted glance, they come
To claim a kindly welcome home.
Nor shall the old-time daedal sting
Of prejudice, their manhood wing,
Nor heights, nor depths, nor living streams
Stand in the pathway of their dreams!
They are embosomed in the sod,
In still and tranquil leisure,
Their lives they’ve cast like trifles down,
To serve their country’s pleasure.
Nor bugle call, nor mother’s voice,
Nor moody mob’s unreason,
Shall break their solace and repose
Through swiftly changing season.
O graves of men who lived and died
Afar from life’s high pleasures,
Fold them in tenderly and warm
With manifold fond measures.
Peace on a thousand hills and dales,
Peace in the hearts of men
While kindliness reclaims the soil
Where bitterness has been.
The night of strife is drifting past,
The storm of shell has ceased,
Disrupted is the cordon fell,
Sweet charity released.
Forth from the shadow, swift we come
Wrought in the flame together,
All men as one beneath the sun
In brotherhood forever.
Where are the brave men, where are the strong men?
Pygmies rise
And spawn the earth.
Weak-kneed, weak-hearted, and afraid,
Afraid to face the counsel of their timid hearts,
Afraid to look men squarely,
Down they gaze—
With fatal fascination
Down, down—
Into the whirling maggot sands
Of prejudice.
The woes of flesh are naught
To one who knows
The agony of soul!
’Twere but the thud of wind and rain
Upon the roof.
The woes of flesh are naught
To one who knows!
Many cages round me,
Bar on bar
Stand grim, forbidding!
Ghostly pressures
Clutch my heart.
I gaze with eyes unseeing—
Whereunto may I wander free?
Alas, alas!
My garden walks lie inwardly!
With but one life full certified,
And that of every gleam denied
My portion,
Close to the unrelenting sod,
E’en as my fathers dumbly trod,
I’ve slumbered;
But now a surging, wild unrest
Uproots the poppies from my breast,
My soul awake, erect! anew!
I stand and face the star-swept blue,
And swear to make my dreams come true!
Aflounder the uncompassed darkness of doubt
In search of the path to the goal
That lies at the end of our transient day,
The ultimate bourne of the soul;
I grasp into nothingness, feebly essay
To clasp but a willow, a stone,
And grope through the stepless, unechoing gloom
Unanswered, unsuccored, alone!
The verdure sleeps in winter,
Awakes with April rain,
The sun swings low—’tis night—ascends,
And lo! ’tis morn again:
The world spins on triumphant
Across a trackless sky,
And man seeks evermore in vain
The primal reason why.
O whither are we rushing?
And wherefrom were we torn?
We breathe from out the silences,
And breathless, back are borne.
Deep in the soul are voices
Returning this reply:
It took a God to make us,
Only God can answer why!
Forever and forevermore,
Across the heights, the deeps,
Spurred by an ever-flaming zeal
That slumbers not, nor sleeps—
We chase the furtive form of fame
Beyond the edge of dusk,
To bear within our arms at length,
An empty mocking, husk!
The long, grim years with iron tread
Move down the shuttered isle
Of time’s unrecking labyrinth
Paved with forgotten dead.
And I, a feather in their wake,
Gaze long and tremblingly
Into these sunless corridors,
Praying the light to break!
We’re wending the trail of the vanishing road,
With a song and a shout, just to lighten the load,
That lies in the heart, filled with queries and cares,
For never a traveler knows where he fares.
But on with a jest, and rollicksome cheer,
With laughter that leaps, as a veil, for the tear;
The world’s weary caravan
