From the vale they follow’d thronging,
Never one has reached the height.
Through all bosoms thrill’d the longing
For a greater Day’s dawn-light;
Through all souls subduing strode
The alarum-call of God.
But the sacrifice they dread!
Will, the weakling, hides his head;—
One man died for them of yore,—
Cowardice is crime no more!
[Sinks down on a stone, and looks with
shrinking gaze around.]
Oft I shudder’d at their doom;
And I walk’d, with horror quivering,
As a little child walks shivering
Amid shrieking shapes that loom
In a dim and haunted room.
But I check’d my bosom’s quaking,
And bethought me, and consoled it:
Out of doors the day is breaking,
Not of night it is, this gloom,
But the shutters barr’d enfold it;
And I thought, the day inwelling,
Rich with summer’s golden bloom,
Shall anon prevail, expelling
All the darkness that is dwelling
In the dim and haunted room.
O how bitter my dismay!
Pitchy darkness on me broke,—
And, without, a nerveless folk
Sat forlorn by fjord and bay,
Dim traditions treasuring
While their sotted souls decay.
Even as, year by year, the king
Treasured up his Snefrid dead,
Loosed the linen shroud o’erspread
By her mute heart listening low,
Still upon hope’s fragments fed,
Thinking, “Now the roses red
In her pallid ashes blow!”
None, like him, arose, and gave
The grave’s debt unto the grave;
None among them wise to know:
“Dreaming cannot kindle dust,
Down into the earth it must,
Dust is only made to breed
Nurture for the new-sown seed.”
Night, black night,—and night again
Over children, women, men!
O could I with levin-flame
Save them from the straw-death’s shame!
[Leaps up.]
Gloomy visions I see sweep
Like the Wild Hunt through the night.
Lo, the Time is Tempest-dight,
Calls for heroes, death to dare,
Calls for naked steel to leap,
And for scabbards to hang bare;—
Kinsfolk, lo, to battle riding,
While their gentle brothers, hiding,
From the hat of darkness peep.
And yet more I do divine—
All the horror of their shame,—
Men that shriek and wives that whine,
Deaf to every cry and claim,
See them on their brows imprinting
“Poor folks sea-bound” for their name,
“Humble farthings of God’s minting!”
Pale they listen to the fray,—
Willing-weakness for their shield.—
Rainbow o’er the mead of May,
Flag, where fliest thou now afield?
Where’s that tricolor to-day,—
Which the wind of myriad song,
Beat and bellied from the mast
Till a zealot king at last
Split it into teeth and tongue?
But you used the tongue to brag;
And what boots the toothed flag
If the dragon dares not bite?
Would the folk had spared those cheers,
And the zealot king those shears!
Four-square flag of peace suffices,
When a stranded craft capsizes,
To give warning of her plight!
Direr visions, worse foreboding,
Glare upon me through the gloom!
Britain’s smoke-cloud sinks corroding
On the land in noisome fume;
Smirches all its tender bloom,
All its gracious verdure dashes,
Sweeping low with breath of bane,
Stealing sunlight from the plain,
Showering down like rain of ashes
On the city of God’s doom.—
Fouler featured men are grown;—
Dropping water’s humming drone
Echoes through the mine’s recesses:
Bustling, smug, a pigmy pack
Plucks its prey from ore’s embraces,
Walks with crooked soul and back,
Glares like dwarfs with greedy eyes
For the golden glittering lies;
Speechless souls with lips unsmiling,
Hearts that fall of brothers rends not,
Nor their own to fury frets,
Hammer-wielding, coining, filing;
Light’s last gleam forlornly flies;
For this bastard folk forgets
That the need of willing ends not
When the power of willing dies!
Direr visions, direr doom,
Glare upon me through the gloom.
Craft, the wolf, with howl and yell,
Bays at Wisdom, sun of earth;
Cries of ruin ring to North,
Call to arms by fjord and fell;
And the pigmy, quaking, grim,
Hisses: “What is that to him?”
Let the other nations glow,
Let the mighty meet the foe,
We can ill afford to bleed,—
We are weak, may fairly plead
From a giants’ war exemption,
Need not offer All as meed
For our fraction of Redemption.
Not for us the cup He drank,
Not for us the thorny wreath
In His temples drove its teeth,
Not for us the spear-shaft sank
In the Side whose life was still.
Not for us the burning thrill
Of the nails that clove and tore.
We, the weak, the least accounted,
Battle-summons may ignore!
Not for us the Cross He mounted!
Just the stirrup-slash’s stain,
Just the gash the cobbler scored
In the shoulder of the Lord,
Is our portion of His pain!
[Throws himself down in the snow and covers his face; presently he looks up.]
Was I dreaming! Dream I still?
Mist-enshrouded is the hill.
Were those visions but the vain
Phantoms of a fever’d brain?
Is the image clean outworn
Whereunto Man’s soul was born?
Is the Maker’s spirit fled——
[Listening.]
Ha, what song breaks overhead?