Collected Poems Volume I Part 37

How beautiful is the battle, How splendid are the spears, When our banner is the sky And our watchword _Liberty_, And our kingdom lifted high above the years.

II

How purple shall our blood be, How glorious our scars, When we lie there in the night With our faces full of light And the death upon them smiling at the stars.

III

How golden is our hauberk, And steel, and steel our sword, And our shield without a stain As we take the field again, We whose armour is the armour of the Lord!

VICISTI, GALILaeE

"The shrines are dust, the G.o.ds are dead,"

They cried in ancient Rome!

"Ah yet, the Idalian rose is red, And bright the Paphian foam: For all your Galilaean tears We turn to her," men say ...

But we, we hasten thro' the years To our own yesterday.

Thro' all the thousand years ye need To make the lost so fair, Before ye can award His meed Of perfect praise and prayer!

Ye liberated souls, the crown Is yours; and yet, some few Can hail, as this great Cross goes down Its distant triumph, too.

Poor scornful Lilliputian souls, And are ye still too proud To risk your little aureoles By kneeling with the crowd?

Do ye still dream ye "stand alone"

So fearless and so strong?

To-day we claim the rebels' throne And leave you with the throng.

Yes, He has conquered! You at least The "van-guard" leaves behind To croon old tales of king and priest In the ingles of mankind: The breast of Aphrodite glows, Apollo's face is fair; But O, the world's wide anguish knows No Apollonian prayer.

Not ours to scorn the first white gleam Of beauty on this earth, The clouds of dawn, the nectarous dream, The G.o.ds of simpler birth; But, as ye praise them, your own cry Is fraught with deeper pain, And the Compa.s.sionate ye deny Returns, returns again.

O, worshippers of the beautiful, Is this the end then, this,-- That ye can only see the skull Beneath the face of bliss?

No monk in the dark years ye scorn So barren a pathway trod As ye who, ceasing not to mourn, Deny the mourner's G.o.d.

And, while ye scoff, on every side Great hints of Him go by,-- Souls that are hourly crucified On some new Calvary!

O, tortured faces, white and meek, Half seen amidst the crowd, Grey suffering lips that never speak, The Glory in the Cloud!

_In flower and dust, in chaff and grain, He binds Himself and dies!

We live by His eternal pain, His hourly sacrifice; The limits of our mortal life Are His._ The whisper thrills Under the sea's perpetual strife, And through the sunburnt hills.

Darkly, as in a gla.s.s, our sight Still gropes thro' Time and s.p.a.ce: We cannot see the Light of Light With angels, face to face: Only the tale His martyrs tell Around the dark earth rings He died and He went down to h.e.l.l And lives--the King of Kings!

And, while ye scoff, from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, From sea to moaning sea, _Eloi_, _Eloi_, goes up once more _Lama sabacthani!_ The heavens are like a scroll unfurled, The writing flames above-- This is the King of all the world Upon His Cross of Love.

DRAKE

_DEDICATED TO RUDOLPH CHAMBERS LEHMANN_

PROLOGUE TO AMERICAN EDITION

I

England, my mother, Lift to my western sweetheart One full cup of English mead, breathing of the may!

Pledge the may-flower in her face that you and ah, none other, Sent her from the mother-land Across the dashing spray.

II

Hers and yours the story: Think of it, oh, think of it-- That immortal dream when El Dorado flushed the skies!

Fill the beaker full and drink to Drake's undying glory, Yours and hers (Oh, drink of it!) The dream that never dies.

III

Yours and hers the free-men Who scanned the stars and westward sung When a king commanded and the Atlantic thundered "Nay!"

Hers as yours the pride is, for Drake our first of seamen First upon his bow-sprit hung That bunch of English may.

IV

Pledge her deep, my mother; Through her veins thy life-stream runs!

Spare a thought, too, sweetheart, for my mother o'er the sea!

Younger eyes are yours; but ah, those old eyes and none other Once bedewed the may-flower; once, As yours, were clear and free.

V

Once! Nay, now as ever Beats within her ancient heart All the faith that took you forth to seek your heaven alone: Shadows come and go; but let no shade of doubt dissever, Cloak, or cloud, or keep apart Two souls whose prayer is one.

VI

Sweetheart, ah, be tender-- Tender with her prayer to-night!

Such a goal might yet be ours!--the battle-flags be furled, All the wars of earth be crushed, if only now your slender Hand should grasp her gnarled old hand And federate the world.

VII