Part 3 (1/2)
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 l.u.s.t 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 Pet.i.tions piously the Lord-- Vexing the void abyss with prayer.
O irony too deep for mirth!
O posturing apes that rant, and dare This antic att.i.tude! O Earth, With your wild jest of wicked prayer!
I dare not laugh ... a rising swell Of laughter breaks in shrieks somewhere-- No doubt they relish it in h.e.l.l, This cosmic jest of Earth at prayer!
SHADOWS
HAUNTED
(THE GHOST SPEAKS)
A GHOST is the freak of a sick man's brain?
Then why do ye start and s.h.i.+ver so?