The Little Book of Modern Verse | Page 7

words he scorns;
Not the sinuous speech of schools he hears, but a knightly shouting,
And never comes darkness down, yet he greeteth a million morns.
He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of roaming;
All
roads and the flowing of waves and the speediest flight he knows, But
wherever his feet are set, his soul is forever homing,
And going, he
comes, and coming he heareth a call and goes.
He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of sorrow,
At
death and the dropping of leaves and the fading of suns he smiles, For a
dream remembers no past and scorns the desire of a morrow, And a
dream in a sea of doom sets surely the ultimate isles.
He whom a dream hath possessed treads the impalpable marches, From
the dust of the day's long road he leaps to a laughing star, And the ruin
of worlds that fall he views from eternal arches, And rides God's
battlefield in a flashing and golden car.
The Kings. [Louise Imogen Guiney]
A man said unto his Angel:
"My spirits are fallen low,
And I cannot
carry this battle:
O brother! where might I go?
"The terrible Kings are on me
With spears that are deadly bright;

Against me so from the cradle
Do fate and my fathers fight."
Then said to the man his Angel:
"Thou wavering, witless soul,
Back
to the ranks! What matter
To win or to lose the whole,
"As judged by the little judges
Who hearken not well, nor see?
Not
thus, by the outer issue,
The Wise shall interpret thee.
"Thy will is the sovereign measure
And only events of things:
The
puniest heart, defying,
Were stronger than all these Kings.

"Though out of the past they gather,
Mind's Doubt, and Bodily Pain,

And pallid Thirst of the Spirit
That is kin to the other twain,
"And Grief, in a cloud of banners,
And ringletted Vain Desires,

And Vice, with the spoils upon him
Of thee and thy beaten sires, --
"While Kings of eternal evil
Yet darken the hills about,
Thy part is
with broken sabre
To rise on the last redoubt;
"To fear not sensible failure,
Nor covet the game at all,
But fighting,
fighting, fighting,
Die, driven against the wall."
Mockery. [Louis Untermeyer]
God, I return to You on April days
When along country roads You walk with me,
And my faith
blossoms like the earliest tree
That shames the bleak world with its
yellow sprays --
My faith revives, when through a rosy haze
The clover-sprinkled hills smile quietly,
Young winds uplift a bird's
clean ecstasy . . .
For this, O God, my joyousness and praise!
But now -- the crowded streets and choking airs,
The squalid people, bruised and tossed about;
These, or the
over-brilliant thoroughfares,
The too-loud laughter and the empty shout,
The mirth-mad city,
tragic with its cares . . .
For this, O God, my silence -- and my doubt.
An Ode in Time of Hesitation. [William Vaughn Moody]
I

Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made
To thrill the heedless
passer's heart with awe,
And set here in the city's talk and trade
To
the good memory of Robert Shaw,
This bright March morn I stand,

And hear the distant spring come up the land;
Knowing that what I
hear is not unheard
Of this boy soldier and his Negro band,
For all
their gaze is fixed so stern ahead,
For all the fatal rhythm of their
tread.
The land they died to save from death and shame
Trembles
and waits, hearing the spring's great name,
And by her pangs these
resolute ghosts are stirred.
II
Through street and mall the tides of people go
Heedless; the trees
upon the Common show
No hint of green; but to my listening heart

The still earth doth impart
Assurance of her jubilant emprise,
And it
is clear to my long-searching eyes
That love at last has might upon
the skies.
The ice is runneled on the little pond;
A telltale patter
drips from off the trees;
The air is touched with Southland spiceries,

As if but yesterday it tossed the frond
Of pendant mosses where
the live-oaks grow
Beyond Virginia and the Carolines,
Or had its
will among the fruits and vines
Of aromatic isles asleep beyond

Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.
III
Soon shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee,
Spying the arbutus,
spring's dear recluse;
Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose

Go honking northward over Tennessee;
West from Oswego to
Sault Sainte-Marie,
And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung,

And yonder where, gigantic, wilful, young,
Chicago sitteth at the
northwest gates,
With restless violent hands and casual tongue

Moulding her mighty fates,
The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal
sheen;
And like a larger sea, the vital green
Of springing wheat
shall vastly be outflung
Over Dakota and the prairie states.
By

desert people immemorial
On Arizonan mesas shall be done
Dim
rites unto the thunder and the sun;
Nor shall the primal gods lack
sacrifice
More splendid, when the white Sierras call
Unto the
Rockies straightway to arise
And dance before the unveiled ark of the
year
Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms,
Unrolling rivers
clear
For flutter of broad phylacteries;
While Shasta