Classic Poem

You knew me of old and feared me,
Dreading my face revealed;
Temples and altars you reared me,
Wooed me with shuddering names;
Masking your fear in meekness,
You pæaned the doom I wield,
Wrought me a robe of your weakness,
A crown of your woven shames.

Image of all earth's error,
Big as the bulk of its guilt,
Lo, I darkled with terror,
A demon of spite and grudge;
You made me a vessel of fury
Brimmed with the blood you spilt;
With devils of hell for jury,
You throned me a pitiless judge.

For ever the wage of sorrow
Paid for the lawless deed;
Never the gray to-morrow
Paused for a pious price;
Never by prayer and psalter
Perished the guilty seed;
Vain was the wail at the altar,
The smoke of the sacrifice.
I come like a crash of thunder;
I come as a slow-toothed dread;
With fire and sword to plunder
Or only with lust and sloth.
By star or sun I creep or run,
And lo, my will was sped
By the might of the Mede, the hate of the Hun,
The bleak northwind of the Goth!

Yet, older than malice and cunning,
The love and the hate of your creed,
I smile in the blossom sunning,
I am hurricane lightning-shod!
Revealed in a myriad dresses,
I am master or slave at need.

You grope for my face with your guesses,
And kneel to your guess for a god.

I am one in the fall of the pebble,
The call of the sea to the stream,
The wrath of the starving rebel.
The plunge of the vernal thaw:
The yearning of things to be level,
The stir of the deed in the dream;
I am these—I am angel and devil—