Around those memoried tracks of
scarlet mud,
To sow her future from an ashen urn
By lantern-light, as dragons' teeth are sown?
Of bleeding pride the
piercing seer is blind.
But, cleared her eyes of that ensanguined scud
Distorting her true features, to be shown
Benignly
luminous, one who bears
Humanity at breast, and she might learn
How surely the excelling
generous find
Renouncement is possession. Sure
As light enkindles light when
heavenlyearthly mates,
The flame of pure immits the flame of pure,
Magnanimous magnanimous creates.
So to
majestic beauty
stricken rears
Hard-visaged rock against the risen glow;
And men are in the secret with the spheres,
Whose glory is celestially to bestow.
Now nation looks to nation, that may live
Their common nurseling, like the torrent's flower,
Shaken by foul Destruction's fast-piled heap.
On France is laid the proud initiative
Of sacrifice in one self-mastering hour,
Whereby more than her lost one will she reap;
Perchance the very lost regain,
To count it less than her
superb reward.
Our Europe, where is
debtor each to each,
Pass
measure of
excess, and war is Cain,
Fraternal from the Seaman's beach,
From answering Rhine in grand accord,
From Neva beneath Northern cloud,
And from our Transatlantic Europe loud,
Will hail the rare example for their theme;
Give
response, as rich
foliage to the breeze;
In their entrusted nurseling know them one:
Like a brave
vessel under press of steam,
Abreast the winds and tides, on angry seas,
Plucked by the heavens
forlorn of present sun,
Will drive through darkness, and, with faith supreme,
Have sight of haven and the
crowded quays.
THE CAGEING OF ARES
[Iliad, v. V. 385--Dedicated to the Council at The Hague.]
How big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed
At sight of her boy Giants on the leap
Each over other as they neighboured home,
Fronting the day's
descent across green slopes,
And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced.
Close with them in their fun, she
scarce could guess,
Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft,
It signalled some
adventurous master-trick
To set Olympians buzzing in debate,
Lest it might be their godhead undermined,
The Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes high
On shoulders of his brother Otos waved
For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news,
Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roar
While Otos aped the prisoner's wrists and knees,
With
doleful sniffs between recurrent howls;
Till Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched,
And both upon her bosom
shaken to speech,
Burst the hot story out of throats of both,
Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut
The
hurried spout. And as when drifting storm
Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon
A peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleam
Of grass and the river's crooks and snaky coils,
Signification marvellous she caught,
Through gurglings of
triumphant jollity,
Which now engulphed and now gave eye; at last
Subsided, and the serious naked deed,
With mountain-cloud of
laughter banked around,
Stood in her sight confirmed: she could believe
That these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized,
These two made up of lion, bear and fox,
Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy,
Still by the
reckoning infants among men,
Had done the deed to strike the Titan host
In envy dumb, in
envious heart elate:
These two combining strength and craft had snared,
Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged
The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War;
Destroyer, ravager,
superb in plumes;
The
barren furrower of anointed fields;
The
scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky,
Her hated enemy, too long her scourge:
Great Ares. And they gagged his
trumpet mouth
When they had seized on his implacable spear,
Hugged him to reedy
helplessness despite
His
godlike fury startled from amaze.
For he had eyed them nearing him in play,
The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled,
Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount
Ossa, beside a brushwood
cavern; there
On Earth's original fisticuffs they called
For ease of sharp
dispute:
whereat the God,
Approving, deemed that
sometime trained to arms,
Good servitors of Ares they would be,
And ply the
pointed spear to dominate
Their rebel
restless fellows,
villain brood
Vowed to defy Im
mortals. So it chanced
Amusedly he watched them, and as one
The lusty twain were on him and they had him.
Breath to us, Powers of air, for
laughter loud!
Cock of Olympus he,
superb in plumes!
Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes!
Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him,
Knew him the
famine,
pestilence and waste;
A desolating fire to blind the sight
With splendour built of
fruitful things in ashes;
The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice;
Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice,
Heard from the babe as from the broken crone.
Behold him in his
vessel of
bronze encased,
And tumbled down the cave. But rather look -
Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought,
Of all the Gods to let her secret fly,
Hermes, after the thirteen songful months!
Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts,
And
shatter earth's delirious holiday,
Then first, as where the
fountain runs a stream,
Resolving to
composure on its throbs.
But see her in the Seasons through that year;
That one glad year and the fair
opening month.
Had never our Great Mother such sweet face!
War with her, gentle war with her, each day
Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung,
On the
morrow stood to
challenge; in their strength
Renewed,
indomitable;
whereof they won,
From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids,
Her ready secret: the abounding life