Classic Poem

— Not this, not this my word to you!
O you, to whom our hope is bound,
and love, whoever brood anew,
each age, on the dread lot you found,

seeing you, in the dark of time
forever that dumb battlefield,
piteous, ignored, trampled, sublime,
where God and Night struggle nor yield.

till there be won that glorious birth
that weds them, slain, embraced, and fused
in man, the arisen soul of Earth
— how many a time have ye refused!

Was this your faith to them whose trust
urged within your flesh, your bone,
compulsive, moulding — which ye must
obey, or madden, all unknown —

to them that in the rearward dark
bow'd them above the clod and fed
the brooding earth with dream, with stark
sweat, and with sorrow of their dead;

and laid them in her lap, content
to pass, if so her sacred morn
might show some time the grave-clothes rent
around the Saviour, Easter-born!

and that high sorrow of the stars,
long-sunder'd, suff'ring, shall it help
nothing against the hate that mars?
and this, your street-long bloodhound-yelp,

shall this be all the note our earth
sends outward to the night, to greet
her sisters, bound in mutual dearth?
Is Eden nought but the loud street?