Classic Poem

O life, O radiance, love, delight,
O nuptial rose and valley of bliss
renew'd in maiden bloom and bright
with morn each time thou stoop'st to kiss;

Eden, whence only life is whole
and healing, when thy angel-flowers
sigh the dew's silence into our soul
what hast thou with these wars of ours?

We slay and die: thou art not scarr'd
nor dimm'd with battle-smoke; the din
stirs thee as little as when the hard
God spake the foolish word of sin

o'er foolish souls of men that fear'd,
but thou didst shine in changeless glee
and joy of fruitful strife, endear'd
— and yet our wars are all from thee.

Thou torturing, when thy love invades,
this body of death and hate and greed
gibbers and writhes and frantic raids
break over it and the nations bleed:

and I, who love thee, how oft have I
dream'd of that foolish spirit of ire
riding the mass'd prophetic sky
that breaks in sleet and hail of fire

above the hated citadels,
or done the holy abysms this wrong
to array their ghost, the voids and hells,
against the turrets of the strong:

nor minded me that thou, when spite
and hate have won all they may win,
changing thy shape to Death and Night
(for these and thou are subtle kin),

resumest all our waste and new
conceiving, bring'st to better birth
in thy glad lap where fire and dew
wed in the war that brightens earth.

Thee with whose name in bitter jest
these songs began, to thee at the end
I turn, that all their hate confess'd
as worthless, yet if thou befriend

some note of love, crying in pangs
of wrath and grief, may echo higher
than the derided bow that twangs
against the spectre-walls of Tyre.