The New Morning | Page 3

could see.?Our hearts were all three thousand miles away.?There were no trumpets blown for victory.?A million dead were calling us that day.
And eyes grew blind, at times; but grief was deep,?Deeper than any foes or friends have known;?For Oh, my country's lips are locked to keep?Her bitterest loss her own, and all her own.
Only the music told what else was dumb,?The funeral march to which our pulses beat;?For all our dead went by, to a muffled drum?We heard the tread of all those phantom feet.
Yes. There was victory! Deep in every soul.?We heard them marching to their unseen goal.
III.
There, once again, we saw the Cross go by,?The Cross that fell with all those glorious towers,?Burnt black in France or mocked on Calvary,?Till--in one night--the crosses rose like flowers,?Legions of small white crosses, mile on mile,?Pencilled with names that had outfought all pain,?Where every shell-torn acre seems to smile--?_Who shall destroy the cross that rose again?_
Out of the world's Walpurgis, where hope perished,?Where all the forms of faith in ruin fell,?Where every sign of heaven that earth had cherished?Shrivelled among the lava-floods of hell,
The eternal Cross that conquers might with right?Rose like a star to lead us through the night.
IV.
How shall the world remember? Men forget:?Our dead are all too many even for Fame!?Man's justice kneels to kings, and pays no debt?To those who never courted her acclaim.
Cheat not your heart with promises to pay?For gifts beyond all price so freely given.?Where is the heart so rich that it can say?To those who mourn, "I will restore your heaven"?
But these, with their own hands, laid up their treasure?Where never an emperor can break in and steal,?Treasure for those that loved them past all measure?In those high griefs that earth can never heal,
Proud griefs, that walk on earth, yet gaze above,?Knowing that sorrow is but remembered love.
V.
Love that still holds us with immortal power,?Yet cannot lift us to His realm of light;?Love that still shows us heaven for one brief hour?Only to daunt the heart with that sheer height;
Love that is made of loveliness entire?In form and thought and act; and still must shame us?Because we ever acknowledge and aspire,?And yet let slip the shining hands that claim us.
O, if this Love might cloak with rags His glory,?Laugh, eat and drink, and dwell with suffering men,?Sit with us at our hearth, and hear our story,?This world--we thought--might be transfigured then.
"But Oh," Love answered, with swift human tears,?"All these things have I done, these many years."
VI.
"This day," Love said, "if ye will hear my voice;?I mount and sing with birds in all your skies.?I am the soul that calls you to rejoice.?And every wayside flower is my disguise.
"Look closely. Are the wings too wide for pity??Look closely. Do these tender hues betray??How often have I sought my Holy City??How often have ye turned your hearts away?
"Is there not healing in the beauty I bring you??Am I not whispering in green leaves and rain,?Singing in all that woods and seas can sing you??Look, once, on Love, and earth is heaven again.
"O, did your Spring but once a century waken,?The heaven of heavens for this would be forsaken."
VII.
There's but one gift that all our dead desire,?One gift that men can give, and that's a dream,?Unless we, too, can burn with that same fire?Of sacrifice; die to the things that seem;
Die to the little hatreds; die to greed;?Die to the old ignoble selves we knew;?Die to the base contempts of sect and creed,?And rise again, like these, with souls as true.
Nay (since these died before their task was finished)?Attempt new heights, bring even their dreams to birth:--?Build us that better world, Oh, not diminished?By one true splendor that they planned on earth.
And that's not done by sword, or tongue, or pen,?There's but one way. God make us better men.
AMERICAN POEMS 1912-1917
REPUBLIC AND MOTHERLAND?(_1912_)
(Written after entering New York Harbor at Daybreak)
Up the vast harbor with the morning sun?The ship swept in from sea;?Gigantic towers arose, the night was done,?And--there stood Liberty.
Silent, the great torch lifted in one hand,?The dawn in her proud eyes,?Silent, for all the shouts that vex her land,?Silent, hailing the skies;
Hailing that mightier Kingdom of the Blest?Our seamen sought of old,?The dream that lured the nations through the West,?The city of sunset gold.
Saxon and Norman in one wedded soul?Shook out one flag like fire;?But westward, westward, moved the gleaming goal,?Westward, the vast desire.
Westward and ever westward ran the call,?They followed the pilgrim sun,?Seeking that land which should enfold them all,?And weld all hearts in one.
Here on this mightier continent apart,?Here on these rolling plains,?Swells the first throb of that immortal heart,?The pulse of those huge veins.
Still, at these towers, our Old-World cities jest,?And neither hear nor see?The brood of gods at that gigantic breast,?The conquering race to be.
Chosen from many--for no sluggard soul?Confronts that