The New Morning | Page 2

folk of our tongue be afraid of it??England was born of it. England was made of it,?Made of this welding of tribes into one,?This marriage of pilgrims that followed the sun!?Briton and Roman and Saxon were drawn?By winds of this Pentecost, out of the dawn,?Westward, to make her one people of many;?But here is a union more mighty than any.?Know you the soul of this deep exultation??Know you the word that goes forth to this nation?
_I am the breath of God. I am His Liberty.?Let there be light over all His creation._
Over this Continent, wholly united,?They that were foemen in Europe are plighted.?Here, in a league that our blindness and pride?Doubted and flouted and mocked and denied,?Dawns the Republic, the laughing, gigantic?Europe, united, beyond the Atlantic.?That is America, speaking one tongue,?Acting her epics before they are sung,?Driving her rails from the palms to the snow,?Through States that are greater than Emperors know,?Forty-eight States that are empires in might,?But ruled by the will of one people tonight,?Nerved as one body, with net-works of steel,?Merging their strength in the one Commonweal,?Brooking no poverty, mocking at Mars,?Building their cities to talk with the stars.?Thriving, increasing by myriads again?Till even in numbers old Europe may wane.?How shall a son of the England they fought?Fail to declare the full pride of his thought,?Stand with the scoffers who, year after year,?Bring the Republic their half-hidden sneer??Now, as in beauty she stands at our side,?Who shall withhold the full gift of his pride??Not the great England who knows that her son,?Washington, fought her, and Liberty won.?England, whose names like the stars in their station,?Stand at the foot of that world's Declaration,--?Washington, Livingston, Langdon, she claims them,?It is her right to be proud when she names them,?Proud of that voice in the night as it came,?Tossing the flags of the nations to flame:
_I am the breath of God. I am His laughter.?I am His Liberty. That is my name._
Flags, in themselves, are but rags that are dyed.?Flags, in that wind, are like nations enskied.?See, how they grapple the night as it rolls?And trample it under like triumphing souls.?Over the city that never knew sleep,?Look at the riotous folds as they leap.?Thousands of tri-colors, laughing for France,?Ripple and whisper and thunder and dance;?Thousands of flags for Great Britain aflame?Answer their sisters in Liberty's name.?Belgium is burning in pride overhead.?Poland is near, and her sunrise is red.?Under and over, and fluttering between,?Italy burgeons in red, white, and green.?See, how they climb like adventurous flowers,?Over the tops of the terrible towers....?_There, in the darkness, the glories are mated.?There, in the darkness, a world is created.?There, in this Pentecost, streaming on high.?There, with a glory of stars in the sky.?There the broad flag of our union and liberty?Rides the proud night-wind and tyrannies die._
ON THE WESTERN FRONT?(_1916_)
I.
I found a dreadful acre of the dead,?Marked with the only sign on earth that saves.?The wings of death were hurrying overhead,?The loose earth shook on those unquiet graves;
For the deep gun-pits, with quick stabs of flame,?Made their own thunders of the sunlit air;?Yet, as I read the crosses, name by name,?_Mort pour la France_, it seemed that peace was there;?Sunlight and peace, a peace too deep for thought,?The peace of tides that underlie our strife,?The peace with which the moving heavens are fraught,?The peace that is our everlasting life.
The loose earth shook. The very hills were stirred.?The silence of the dead was all I heard.
II.
We, who lie here, have nothing more to pray.?To all your praises we are deaf and blind.?We may not even know if you betray?Our hope, to make earth better for mankind.
Only our silence, in the night, shall grow?More silent, as the stars grow in the sky;?And, while you deck our graves, you shall not know?How many scornful legions pass you by.
For we have heard you say (when we were living)?That some small dream of good would "cost too much."?But when the foe struck, we have watched you giving,?And seen you move the mountains with one touch.
What can be done, we know. But, have no fear!?If you fail now, we shall not see or hear.
VICTORY
(Written after the British Service at Trinity Church, New York)
I.
Before those golden altar-lights we stood,?Each one of us remembering his own dead.?A more than earthly beauty seemed to brood?On that hushed throng, and bless each bending head.
Beautiful on that gold, the deep-sea blue?Of those young seamen, ranked on either side,?Blent with the khaki, while the silence grew?Deep, as for wings--Oh, deep as England's pride.
Beautiful on that gold, two banners rose--?Two flags that told how Freedom's realm was made,?One fair with stars of hope, and one that shows?The glorious cross of England's long crusade;
Two flags, now joined, till that high will be done?Which sent them forth to make the whole world one.
II.
There were no signs of joy that eyes