Part 4 (2/2)

There was a time for service, and he served; And there is no more time for anything But a short gratefulness to those who gave Their scared allegiance to an enterprise That has the name of treason -- which will serve As well as any other for the present.

There are some deeds of men that have no names, And mine may like as not be one of them.

I am not looking far for names tonight.

The King of Glory was without a name Until men gave him one; yet there He was, Before we found Him and affronted Him With numerous ingenuities of evil, Of which one, with His aid, is to be swept And washed out of the world with fire and blood.

Once I believed it might have come to pa.s.s With a small cost of blood; but I was dreaming -- Dreaming that I believed. The Voice I heard When I left you behind me in the north, -- To wait there and to wonder and grow old Of loneliness, -- told only what was best, And with a saving vagueness, I should know Till I knew more. And had I known even then -- After grim years of search and suffering, So many of them to end as they began -- After my sickening doubts and estimations Of plans abandoned and of new plans vain -- After a weary delving everywhere For men with every virtue but the Vision -- Could I have known, I say, before I left you That summer morning, all there was to know -- Even unto the last consuming word That would have blasted every mortal answer As lightning would annihilate a leaf, I might have trembled on that summer morning; I might have wavered; and I might have failed.

And there are many among men today To say of me that I had best have wavered.

So has it been, so shall it always be, For those of us who give ourselves to die Before we are so parcelled and approved As to be slaughtered by authority.

We do not make so much of what they say As they of what our folly says of us; They give us hardly time enough for that, And thereby we gain much by losing little.

Few are alive to-day with less to lose Than I who tell you this, or more to gain; And whether I speak as one to be destroyed For no good end outside his own destruction, Time shall have more to say than men shall hear Between now and the coming of that harvest Which is to come. Before it comes, I go -- By the short road that mystery makes long For man's endurance of accomplishment.

I shall have more to say when I am dead.

The False G.o.ds

”We are false and evanescent, and aware of our deceit, From the straw that is our vitals to the clay that is our feet.

You may serve us if you must, and you shall have your wage of ashes, -- Though arrears due thereafter may be hard for you to meet.

”You may swear that we are solid, you may say that we are strong, But we know that we are neither and we say that you are wrong; You may find an easy wors.h.i.+p in acclaiming our indulgence, But your large admiration of us now is not for long.

”If your doom is to adore us with a doubt that's never still, And you pray to see our faces -- pray in earnest, and you will.

You may gaze at us and live, and live a.s.sured of our confusion: For the False G.o.ds are mortal, and are made for you to kill.

”And you may as well observe, while apprehensively at ease With an Art that's inorganic and is anything you please, That anon your newest ruin may lie crumbling unregarded, Like an old shrine forgotten in a forest of new trees.

”Howsoever like no other be the mode you may employ, There's an order in the ages for the ages to enjoy; Though the temples you are shaping and the pa.s.sions you are singing Are a long way from Athens and a longer way from Troy.

”When we promise more than ever of what never shall arrive, And you seem a little more than ordinarily alive, Make a note that you are sure you understand our obligations -- For there's grief always auditing where two and two are five.

”There was this for us to say and there was this for you to know, Though it humbles and it hurts us when we have to tell you so.

If you doubt the only truth in all our perjured composition, May the True G.o.ds attend you and forget us when we go.”

Archibald's Example

Old Archibald, in his eternal chair, Where trespa.s.sers, whatever their degree, Were soon frowned out again, was looking off Across the clover when he said to me:

”My green hill yonder, where the sun goes down Without a scratch, was once inhabited By trees that injured him -- an evil trash That made a cage, and held him while he bled.

”Gone fifty years, I see them as they were Before they fell. They were a crooked lot To spoil my sunset, and I saw no time In fifty years for crooked things to rot.

”Trees, yes; but not a service or a joy To G.o.d or man, for they were thieves of light.

So down they came. Nature and I looked on, And we were glad when they were out of sight.

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