Excerpt From
"An Ode in Time of Hesitation"
by William Vaughn Moody (1869-1910) |
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THE WARS we wage
Are noble, and our battles still are
won
By justice for us, ere we lift the gage.
We have
not sold our loftiest heritage.
The proud republic hath
not stooped to cheat
And scramble in the market place of
war;
Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star.
Here is
her witness: this, her perfect son,
This delicate and
proud New England soul
Who leads despis�d men, with
just-un-shackled feet,
Up the large ways where death and
glory meet,
To show all peoples that our shame is done,
That once more we are clean and spirit-whole.
Crouched in the sea fog on the moaning sand
All night he
lay, speaking some simple word
From hour to hour to the
slow minds that heard,
Holding each poor life gently in
his hand
And breathing on the base rejected clay
Till
each dark face shone mystical and grand
Against the
breaking day;
And lo, the shard the potter cast away
Was grown a fiery chalice crystal-fine,
Fulfilled of the
divine
Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring finger
stirred.
Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed
Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light,
Whence now,
and now, infernal flowerage bloomed,
Bloomed, burst, and
scattered down its deadly seed,
They swept, and died like
freemen on the height,
Like freemen, and like men of
noble breed;
And when the battle fell away at night
By
hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust
Obscurely in a
common grave with him
The fair-haired keeper of their
love and trust.
Now limb doth mingle with dissove�d limb
In nature's busy old democracy
To flush the mountain
laurel when she blows
Sweet by the southern sea,
And
heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose:
The
untaught hearts with the high heart that knew
This
mountain fortress for no earthly hold
Of temporal
quarrel, but the bastion old
Of spiritual wrong,
Built
by an unjust nation sheer and strong,
Expugnable but by a
nation's rue
And bowing down before that equal shrine
By all men held divine,
Whereof his band and he were the
most holy sign.
"NO HINT OF STAIN"
WE are our
fathers' sons: let those who lead us know!
'T was only
yesterday sick Cuba's cry
Came up the tropic wind, "Now
help us, for we die!"
Then Alabama heard,
And rising,
pale, to Maine and Idaho
Shouted a burning word;
Proud
state with proud impassioned state conferred,
And at the
lifting of a hand sprang forth,
East, west, and south,
and north,
Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and
young
Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan,
By the
unforgotten names of eager boys
Who might have tasted
girls' love and been stung
With the old mystic joys
And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on,
But
that the heart of youth is generous,
We charge you, ye
who lead us,
Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain!
Turn not their new-world victories to gain!
One least
leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays
Of their dear
praise,
One jot of their pure conquest put to hire,
The implacable republic will require;
With clamor, in the
glare and gaze of noon,
Or subtly, coming as a thief at
night,
But surely, very surely, slow or soon
That
insult deep we deeply will requite.
Tempt not our
weakness, our cupidity!
For save we let the island men go
free,
Those baffled and dislaureled ghosts
Will curse
us from the lamentable coasts
Where walk the frustrate
dead.
The cup of trembling shall be drain�d quite,
Eaten the sour bread of astonishment,
With ashes of the
hearth shall be made white
Our hair, and wailing shall be
in the tent:
Then on your guiltier head
Shall our
intolerable self-disdain
Wreak suddenly its anger and its
pain;
For manifest in that disastrous light
We shall
discern the right
And do it, tardily.�O ye who lead,
Take heed!
Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will
smite. |
By William Vaughn Moody (1869-1910)
Listed January 29, 2013 |
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