Classic Poem

I

Spawn
Of a monstrous dawn
Bleary and blind,
Spindrift and spume
Adrift in the gloom
Torn from the surf of the sun
As by teeth of a wind,
So was the Earth begot and begun —
Earth and mankind.

II

Still in our Armageddon burn the old creative fires,
Still with a sword, a flame, a dream, Life works its fierce desires,
Still the world is smelted and wrought as in an athanor —
Swelters and sweals in the roaring blast of the furnaces of War.
But how can we whose paltry life is pent in a petty hour,
How can we in faith foresee that Hate in Love will flower?
How can we know what the fiery Woe smelting the bloody clay
Moulds and fashions, with pains and passions, for aeons as far away
As the lava and lime of bygone time when the young Earth panted flame,
And out of its wondrous, thund'rous heart the burning mountains came?
How can we know that the soul will grow? Seen have we the past,
Seen have we the slaggy scree in a blazing furnace cast,
Seen have we the fingers of flame, and water, and tempest mould
Things as a lily petal fine, as a granite mountain vast;
Seen have we a filmy cloud in voids of space unfold
As sapphire seas, and emerald trees, and meadows of yellow gold.

III

We who have seen white Peace come forth thro' the fiery gates of Strife,
We who have seen wise Death at work at the magic loom of Life,
We who have seen the living bones of our living bodies built
Of the porcelain shells of the dainty dead piled in the deep-sea silt,
We who have seen the atoms dance into bird, and beast, and flower,
How shall we doubt Death's Wisdom, how shall we doubt Love's power?
Out of the fiery tumult there thrilled the vibrant creative Word,
Out of the moaning thunder there leapt the joyous lilt of a bird,
Out of the lurid lightning there shone the light of a woman's eyes,
And we know tho' Death may come and go yet Beauty never dies.

IV

Bodies and souls from a furnace came, and lo, in a furnace still
War is moulding the human heart, smelting the human will.
Things of the spirit, things of the mind, these are the things at stake.
Not bodies only, but faiths and creeds the bomb and the bullet break,
Not mortals only, but mortal sins the fire and the shrapnel slay,
And aspirations, ideals, hopes perish and pass away.
These are not swords, but living souls that clash in the trenches there,
Not battle-planes, but battle-dreams that fight in the azure air.
Foolish may be our war-desires, blundering, blind our aims,
But still the shoddy and sham of life are burned in the battle flames.
By tempest, by fire, by talons and teeth, by war, and disease and lust,
The hand of Death and the hand of Life have wrought at our wondrous dust;
But ever above, the hand of Love our destiny controls,
Moulding to beauty and to truth our bodies and our souls.

V

But why should we destroy
A body like a temple full of joy,
A temple, yea, a Hecatompuloi,
With golden gates
Mighty and broad,
Made not for little Fears and Hates,
But for the fiery Chariots of God?
Why must we slay? We know not why.
With holy pleas we go to kill;
With noble aims we go to die;
But ever still,
Behind our dreams, behind our will,
There work inevitable Fates
Whose far desires our swords fulfil.
We know not why!
Our words are vain!
No gleaming words can glorify
So much of sin, so much of pain.
But we are driven by the Soul
That with his Beauty maketh whole
Even the wounded and the slain.

VI

Caesar and Tamurlaine and Rameses,
Martel the Hammer, Attila the Scourge,
Sardanapalus and Miltiades,
Cyrus, Sennacherib, yea all of these
Were but the surge
Behind the urge
Of boundless seas,
Were but the ripple and the spray
Of far-away
Infinities.
That which they did they knew not, neither knew
What fair far things they fashioned as they slew;
But Death and Life were wise,
With prudent prescient eyes,
And still eternally Man's spirit grew,
And still the Lord,
Keeping a watch and ward,
Shapes man's immortal soul by man's own foolish sword.

VII

Cause and cause behind cause,
Root and root beyond root,
Laws and laws behind laws,
Ripen war's bloody fruit,
But the bloody ripened fruit of the tree of Strife
In a core of love has the seed of eternal Life.

These are the throes
That make the rose,
These are the precious pangs of birth,
These are the woes
Whence ever grows
The myriad Beauty of the Earth.

VIII

O seismic souls of men, the shaken world
Won peace and beauty after wild turmoil.
The flowers their silken bannerets unfurled,
The meadows comforted the tortured soil;
And now, while still the craters trickle blood,
While still the ground is scourged by fiery rains,
The cornflowers and the poppies burst in bud
From the warm ichor of Life's genial veins;
And in the ulcerous gashes of the shells,
In faetid hells,
In leprous thickets full of death and shame,
Twinkle the starwort and the pimpernels,
And gorse and charlock and laburnum flame;
And while the raucous cannon belch and roar,
In sudden silences amid the thunder
We hear the skylarks singing as they soar
Of beauty and of wonder;
And in the trenches, cheek by jowl with Death
(O heart of Youth indomitably strong!),
We hear the muddy boys with merry breath
Chorus a mirthful song.

IX

And all these cataclysms of the soul
Will end in light, and harmony, and peace:
The battle thunder will no longer roll,
The roar of guns will cease.
Only the embattled legions of the mind
Spirit with spirit will in love contend
To comprehend
The Wisdom and the Power
Of the great soul behind,
Sighing in every wind,
Budding in every flower.

X

Time is so brief, Eternity so long,
Life is so low, Infinity so high,
Our bodies are so weak, and Death so strong,
So soon we wither and so soon we die,
That only things of spirit will endure,
And love itself only of Love is sure.
Yet if we clutch the Eternity in Time,
The Infinity that lurks in finite things —
If still we soar and still we climb
With wounded feet and weary wings
Still higher in the realm of thought —
If we have agonised and fought
For Truth and Beauty day by day,
The little things that we have wrought
Will never fade and die away.
But grow and spread
As from the dead
Evolved our bodies' magic clay.

XI

O brave the banners flowing,
Inscribed with holy names,
O brave the pennons showing
Our patriotic aims,
And bravely men are going
Into the battle-flames!
O bravely men have striven
For this or that high prize,
Yet they are drawn and driven
To ends they have not wrought for
To good they have not sought for,
To goals they have not fought for,
By Love that never dies —
By the same Love impassioned
That filled the Earth with fire,
And fiercely, finely fashioned
In Beauty its Desire —
By the same Love whose sighing
Is Pity's gentle breath,
By the same Love who dying
Conquered Death.

XII

Not conquests of great cities,
Not mastery of great seas,
But little loves and pities
Will be their victories.
Yea, little loves and pities,
And children on their knees —
Fair children to inherit
New soarings of the soul,
New faculties of spirit,
As centuries unroll, —
Not arrogant ambitions
For Empire rich and broad,
But ever brighter Visions
Of the wise heart of God.

From every crater bloody
Will bloom a kindly thought;
From every tortured body
Some beauty will be wrought.
Love will again awaken,
Truth will regain her crown;
Men's seismic souls have shaken
A million Dagons down.