Last Poems | Page 6

hum
As of towns whose king is come
Leading
conquest home from far
And the captives of his war,
And the car of
triumph waits,
And they open wide the gates.
But across the entry
barred
Straddled the revolted guard,
Weaponed and accoutred well

From the arsenals of hell;
And beside him, sick and white,
Sin to
left and Death to right
Turned a countenance of fear
On the flaming
mutineer.
Over us the darkness bowed,
And the anger in the cloud

Clenched the lightning for the stroke;
But the traitor musket spoke.
And the hollowness of hell
Sounded as its master fell,
And the
mourning echo rolled
Ruin through his kingdom old.
Tyranny and
terror flown
Left a pair of friends alone,
And beneath the nether sky

All that stirred was he and I.
Silent, nothing found to say,
We began the backward way;
And the
ebbing luster died
From the soldier at my side,
As in all his spruce
attire
Failed the everlasting fire.
Midmost of the homeward track

Once we listened and looked back;
But the city, dusk and mute,

Slept, and there was no pursuit.
XXXII
When I would muse in boyhood
The wild green woods among,
And nurse resolves and fancies

Because the world was young,
It was not foes to conquer,
Nor sweethearts to be kind,
But it was friends to die for
That I would seek and find.
I sought them far and found them,
The sure, the straight, the brave,
The hearts I lost my own to,
The souls I could not save.
They braced their belts about them,
They crossed in ships the sea,
They sought and found six feet of
ground,
And there they died for me.
XXXIII
When the eye of day is shut,
And the stars deny their beams,
And about the forest hut
Blows the roaring wood of dreams,
From deep clay, from desert rock,
From the sunk sands of the main,
Come not at my door to knock,
Hearts that loved me not again.
Sleep, be still, turn to your rest
In the lands where you are laid;
In far lodgings east and west
Lie down on the beds you made.
In gross marl, in blowing dust,

In the drowned ooze of the sea,
Where you would not, lie you must,
Lie you must, and not with me.
XXXIV
THE FIRST OF MAY
The orchards half the way
From home to Ludlow fair
Flowered on the first of May
In Mays when I was there;
And seen from stile or turning
The plume of smoke would show
Where fires were burning
That went out long ago.
The plum broke forth in green,
The pear stood high and snowed,
My friends and I between
Would take the Ludlow road;
Dressed to the nines and drinking
And light in heart and limb,
And each chap thinking
The fair was held for him.
Between the trees in flower
New friends at fairtime tread
The way where Ludlow tower
Stands planted on the dead.
Our thoughts, a long while after,
They think, our words they say;
Theirs now’s the laughter,
The fair, the first of May.

Ay, yonder lads are yet
The fools that we were then;
For oh, the sons we get
Are still the sons of men.
The sumless tale of sorrow
Is all unrolled in vain:
May comes to-morrow
And Ludlow fair again.
XXXV
When first my way to fair I took
Few pence in purse had I,
And long I used to stand and look
At things I could not buy.
Now times are altered: if I care
To buy a thing, I can;
The pence are here and here’s the fair,
But where’s the lost young man?
--To think that two and two are four
And neither five nor three
The heart of man has long been sore
And long ‘tis like to be.
XXXVI
REVOLUTION
West and away the wheels of darkness roll,
Day’s beamy banner up the east is borne,
Spectres and fears, the
nightmare and her foal,

Drown in the golden deluge of the morn.
But over sea and continent from sight
Safe to the Indies has the earth conveyed
The vast and
moon-eclipsing cone of night,
Her towering foolscap of eternal shade.
See, in mid heaven the sun is mounted; hark,
The belfries tingle to the noonday chime.
‘Tis silent, and the
subterranean dark
Has crossed the nadir, and begins to climb.
XXXVII
EPITAPH ON AN ARMY OF MERCENARIES
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary
calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these
defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
XXXVIII
Oh stay at home, my lad, and plough
The land and not the sea,
And leave the soldiers at their drill,
And

all about the idle hill
Shepherd your sheep with me.
Oh stay with company and mirth
And daylight and the air;
Too full already is the grave
Of fellows
that were good and brave
And died because they were.
XXXIX
When summer’s end is nighing
And skies at evening cloud,
I muse