The Little Book of Modern Verse | Page 8

thou?Of sorrow or of blame?Liftest the lyric leafage from her brow,?And pointest a slow finger at her shame?
V
Lies! lies! It cannot be! The wars we wage?Are noble, and our battles still are won?By justice for us, ere we lift the gage.?We have not sold our loftiest heritage.?The proud republic hath not stooped to cheat?And scramble in the market-place of war;?Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star.?Here is her witness: this, her perfect son,?This delicate and proud New England soul?Who leads despised men, with just-unshackled feet,?Up the large ways where death and glory meet,?To show all peoples that our shame is done,?That once more we are clean and spirit-whole.
VI
Crouched in the sea-fog on the moaning sand?All night he lay, speaking some simple word?From hour to hour to the slow minds that heard,?Holding each poor life gently in his hand?And breathing on the base rejected clay?Till each dark face shone mystical and grand?Against the breaking day;?And lo, the shard the potter cast away?Was grown a fiery chalice crystal-fine,?Fulfilled of the divine?Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring-finger stirred.?Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed?Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light,?Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed,?Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed, --?They swept, and died like freemen on the height,?Like freemen, and like men of noble breed;?And when the battle fell away at night?By hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust?Obscurely in a common grave with him?The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust.?Now limb doth mingle with dissolved limb?In nature's busy old democracy?To flush the mountain laurel when she blows?Sweet by the Southern sea,?And heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose: --?The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew?This mountain fortress for no earthly hold?Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old?Of spiritual wrong,?Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong,?Expugnable but by a nation's rue?And bowing down before that equal shrine?By all men held divine,?Whereof his band and he were the most holy sign.
VII
O bitter, bitter shade!?Wilt thou not put the scorn?And instant tragic question from thine eye??Do thy dark brows yet crave?That swift and angry stave --?Unmeet for this desirous morn --?That I have striven, striven to evade??Gazing on him, must I not deem they err?Whose careless lips in street and shop aver?As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek?Flush from the bronze, and his dead throat to speak??Surely some elder singer would arise,?Whose harp hath leave to threaten and to mourn?Above this people when they go astray.?Is Whitman, the strong spirit, overworn??Has Whittier put his yearning wrath away??I will not and I dare not yet believe!?Though furtively the sunlight seems to grieve,?And the spring-laden breeze?Out of the gladdening west is sinister?With sounds of nameless battle overseas;?Though when we turn and question in suspense?If these things be indeed after these ways,?And what things are to follow after these,?Our fluent men of place and consequence?Fumble and fill their mouths with hollow phrase,?Or for the end-all of deep arguments?Intone their dull commercial liturgies --?I dare not yet believe! My ears are shut!?I will not hear the thin satiric praise?And muffled laughter of our enemies,?Bidding us never sheathe our valiant sword?Till we have changed our birthright for a gourd?Of wild pulse stolen from a barbarian's hut;?Showing how wise it is to cast away?The symbols of our spiritual sway,?That so our hands with better ease?May wield the driver's whip and grasp the jailer's keys.
VIII
Was it for this our fathers kept the law??This crown shall crown their struggle and their ruth??Are we the eagle nation Milton saw?Mewing its mighty youth,?Soon to possess the mountain winds of truth,?And be a swift familiar of the sun?Where aye before God's face his trumpets run??Or have we but the talons and the maw,?And for the abject likeness of our heart?Shall some less lordly bird be set apart??Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat??Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with the bat?
IX
Ah, no!?We have not fallen so.?We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know!?'T was only yesterday sick Cuba's cry?Came up the tropic wind, "Now help us, for we die!"?Then Alabama heard,?And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho?Shouted a burning word.?Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred,?And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth,?East, west, and south, and north,?Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young?Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan,?By the unforgotten names of eager boys?Who might have tasted girl's love and been stung?With the old mystic joys?And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on,?But that the heart of youth is generous, --?We charge you, ye who lead us,?Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain!?Turn not their new-world victories to gain!?One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays?Of their dear praise,?One jot of their pure conquest put to hire,?The implacable