Dreams Dust | Page 5

with her dervish priests;?I have searched to the souls of her hunted beasts?And found love sleeping there;?I have soared on the wings of her flashing dreams;
I have sunk with her dull despair;?I have sweat with her travails and cursed with
her pains;?I have swelled with her foolish pride;?I have raged through a thick red mist at one
with her branded Cains,?With her broken Christs have died.
O beautiful half-god city of visions and love!?O hideous half-brute city of hate!?O wholly human and baffled and passionate town!?The throes of thy burgeoning, stress of thy fight,?Thy bitter, blind struggle to gain for thy body a
soul,?I have known, I have felt, and been shaken
thereby!?Wakened and shaken and broken,?For I hear in thy thunders terrific that throb
through thy rapid veins?The beat of the heart of a world.
A HYMN
(1914)
CLOTHED on with thunder and with steel?And black against the dawn?The whirling armies clash and reel. . . .?A wind, and they are gone?Like mists withdrawn,?Like mists withdrawn!
Like clouds withdrawn, like driven sands,?Earth's body vanisheth:?One solid thing unconquered stands,?The ghost that humbles death.?All else is breath,?All else is breath!
Man rose from out the stinging slime,?Half brute, and sought a soul,?And up the starrier ways of time,?Half god, unto his goal,
He still must climb,?He still must climb!
What though worlds stagger, and the suns?Seem shaken in their place,?Trust thou the leaping love that runs?Creative over space:?Take heart of grace,?Take heart of grace!
What though great kingdoms fall on death?Before the stabbing blade,?Their brazen might was only breath,?Their substance but a shade--?Be not dismayed,?Be not dismayed!
Man's dream which conquered brute and clod?Shall fail not, but endure,?Shall rise, though beaten to the sod,?Shall hold its vantage sure--?As sure as God,?As sure as God!
THE SINGER
A LITTLE while, with love and youth,?He wandered, singing:--?He felt life's pulses hot and strong?Beat all his rapid veins along;?He wrought life's rhythms into song:?He laughed, he sang the Dawn!?So close, so close to life he dwelt?That at rare times and rapt he felt?The fleshly barriers yield and melt;?He trembled, looking on?Creation at her miracles;?His soul-sight pierced the earthly shells?And saw the spirit weave its spells,?The veil of clay withdrawn;--?A little while, with love and youth,?He wandered, singing!
A little while, with age and death,?He wanders, dreaming;--
No more the thunder and the urge?Of earth's full tides that storm the verge?Of heaven with their sweep and surge?Shall lift, shall bear him on;?Where is the golden hope that led?Him comrade with the mighty dead??The love that aureoled his head?--?The glory is withdrawn!?How shall one soar with broken wings??The leagued might of futile things?Wars with the heart that dares and sings;--?It is not always Dawn!?A little while, with age and death,?He wanders, dreaming.
WORDS ARE NOT GUNS
Put by the sword (a dreamer saith),?The years of peace draw nigh!?Already the millennial dawn?Makes red the eastern sky!
Be not deceived. It comes not yet!?The ancient passions keep?Alive beneath their changing masks.?They are not dead. They sleep.
Surely peace comes. As sure as Man?Rose from primeval slime.?That was not yesterday. There's still?A weary height to climb!
And we can dwell too long with dreams?And play too much with words,?Forgetting our inheritance?Was bought and held with swords.
But Truth (you say) makes tyrants quail--?Beats down embattled Wrong??If truth be armed! Be not deceived.?The strife is to the strong.
Words are not guns. Words are not ships.?And ships and guns prevail.?Our liberties, that blood has gained,?Are guarded, or they fail.
Truth does not triumph without blows,?Error not tamely yields.?But falsehood closes with quick faith,?Fierce, on a thousand fields.
And surely, somewhat of that faith?Our fathers fought for clings!?Which called this freedom's hemisphere,?Despite Earth's leagued kings.
Great creeds grow thews, or else they die.?Thought clothed in deed is lord.?What are thy gods? Thy gods brought love??They also brought a sword.
Unchallenged, shall we always stand,?Secure, apart, aloof??Be not deceived. That hour shall come?Which puts us to the proof.
Then, that we hold the trust we have?Safeguarded for our sons,?Let us cease dreaming! Let us have?More ships, more troops, more guns!
WITH THE SUBMARINES
ABOVE, the baffled twilight fails; beneath, the
blind snakes creep;?Beside us glides the charnel shark, our pilot
through the deep;?And, lurking where low headlands shield from
cruising scout and spy,?We bide the signal through the gloom that bids
us slay or die.
All watchful, mute, the crouching guns that guard
the strait sea lanes--?Watchful and hawklike, plumed with hate, the
desperate aeroplanes--?And still as death and swift as fate, above the
darkling coasts,?The spying Wireless sows the night with troops
of stealthy ghosts,
While hushed through all her huddled streets the
tide-walled city waits?The drumming thunders that announce brute
battle at her gates.
Southward a hundred windy leagues, through
storms that blind and bar,?Our cheated cruisers search the waves, our captains
seek the war;?But here the port of peril is; the foeman's dreadnoughts
ride?Sullen and black against the moon, upon a sullen
tide.?And only we to launch ourselves against their
stark advance--?To guide uncertain lightnings through these treacherous
seas of chance!
. . . . . .
And now a wheeling searchlight paints