Part 5

HUDDLED within their savage lair They hearkened to the prowling wind; They heard the loud wings of despair ... And madness beat against the mind.... A sunless world stretched stark outside As if it had cursed God and died; Dumb plains lay prone beneath the weight Of cold unutterably great; Iron ice bound all the bitter seas, The brutal hills were bleak as hate.... Here none but Death might walk at ease!

Then Dickens spoke, and, lo! the vast Unpeopled void stirred into life;

The dead world quickened, the mad blast Hushed for an hour its idiot strife With nothingness....

And from the gloom, Parting the flaps of frozen skin, Old friends and dear came trooping in, And light and laughter filled the room.... Voices and faces, shapes beloved, Babbling lips and kindly eyes, Not ghosts, but friends that lived and moved ... They brought the sun from other skies, They wrought the magic that dispels The bitterer part of loneliness ... And when they vanished each man dreamed His dream there in the wilderness.... One heard the chime of Christmas bells, And, staring down a country lane, Saw bright against the window-pane The firelight beckon warm and red.... And one turned from the waterside Where Thames rolls down his slothful tide To breast the human sea that beats Through roaring London's battered streets

And revel in the moods of men.... And one saw all the April hills Made glad with golden daffodils, And found and kissed his love again....

. . . . . .

By all the troubled hearts he cheers In homely ways or by lost trails, By all light shed through all dark years When hope grows sick and courage quails, We hail him first among his peers; Whether we sorrow, sing, or feast, He, too, hath known and understood-- Master of many moods, high priest Of mirth and lord of cleansing tears!

A POLITICIAN

LEADER no more, be judged of us! Hailed Chief, and loved, of yore-- Youth, and the faith of youth, cry out: Leader and Chief no more!

We dreamed a Prophet, flushed with faith, Content to toil in pain If that his sacrifice might be, Somehow, his people's gain.

We saw a vision, and our blood Beat red and hot and strong: "Lead us (we cried) to war against Some foul, embattled wrong!"

We dreamed a Warrior whose sword Was edged for sham and shame; We dreamed a Statesman far above The vulgar lust for fame.

We were not cynics, and we dreamed A Man who made no truce With lies nor ancient privilege Nor old, entrenched abuse.

We dreamed ... we dreamed ... Youth dreamed a dream! And even you forgot Yourself, one moment, and dreamed, too-- Struck, while your mood was hot!

Struck three or four good blows ... and then Turned back to easier things: The cheap applause, the blatant mob, The praise of underlings!

Praise ... praise ... was ever man so filled, So avid still, of praise? So hungry for the crowd's acclaim, The sycophantic phrase?

O you whom Greatness beckoned to ... O swollen Littleness Who turned from Immortality To fawn upon Success!

O blind with love of self, who led Youth's vision to defeat, Bawling and brawling for rewards, Loud, in the common street!

O you who were so quick to judge-- Leader, and loved, of yore-- Hear now the judgment of our youth: Leader and Chief no more!

THE BAYONET

(1914)

THE great guns slay from a league away, the death-bolts fly unseen, And bellowing hill replies to hill, machine to brute machine, But still in the end when the long lines bend and the battle hangs in doubt They take to the steel in the same old way that their fathers fought it out-- It is man to man and breast to breast and eye to bloodshot eye And the reach and twist of the thrusting wrist, as it was in the days gone by!

Along the shaken hills the guns their drumming thunder roll-- But the keen blades thrill with the lust to kill that leaps from the slayer's soul!

For hand and heart and living steel, one pulse of hate they feel. Is your clan afraid of the naked blade? Does it flinch from the bitter steel? Perish your dreams of conquest then, your swollen hopes and bold, For empire dwells with the stabbing blade, as it did in the days of old!

THE BUTCHERS AT PRAYER

(1914)

EACH nation as it draws the sword And flings its standard to the air Petitions piously the Lord-- Vexing the void abyss with prayer.

O irony too deep for mirth! O posturing apes that rant, and dare This antic attitude! O Earth, With your wild jest of wicked prayer!