Classic Poem

Our world beyond a year of dread
Has paled like Babylon or Rome.
Never for all the blood was shed
Shall life return to it as home.
No peace shall e'er that dream recall;
The avalanche is yet to fall.

Laugh, you whose dreams were outlawed things.
The sceptre from the tyrant slips.
Earth's kings are met by those wild kings
Who swept through the Apocalypse.
Ere the first awful hand be stayed,
The second shall have clutched the blade.

On the white horse is one who rides
Until earth's empires are o'erthrown,
And a red rider yet abides
Whose trumpet call is still unblown,
Whose battlefield shall be the grave
Either for master or for slave.

Once in a zodiac of years
Earth stirs beneath her heaving crust,
And high and low, unheeding tears,
Are equal levelled with the dust.
Laugh, slave, the coming terror brings
Thee to that brotherhood with kings.

Laugh too, you warriors of God,
The tyrants of the spirit fail.
The mitred head shall no more nod
And multitudes of men be pale.
When empires topple here below
The heavens which are their shadows go.

If the black horse's rider reign,
Or the pale horse's rider fire
His burning arrows, with disdain
Laugh. You have come to your desire,
To the last test which yields the right
To walk amid the halls of light.

You, who have made of earth your star,
Cry out, indeed, for hopes made vain:
For only those can laugh who are
The strong Initiates of Pain,
Who know that mighty god to be
Sculptor of immortality.