I
BEFORE the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made | |
| To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe, | |
| And set here in the city's talk and trade | |
| To the good memory of Robert Shaw, | |
| This bright March morn I stand, | 5 |
| And hear the distant spring come up the land; | |
| Knowing that what I hear is not unheard | |
| Of this boy soldier and his negro band, | |
| For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead, | |
| For all the fatal rhythm of their tread. | 10 |
| The land they died to save from death and shame | |
| Trembles and waits, hearing the spring's great name, | |
| And by her pangs these resolute ghosts are stirred. | |
| |
II
Through street and mall the tides of people go | |
| Heedless; the trees upon the Common show | 15 |
| No hint of green; but to my listening heart | |
| The still earth doth impart | |
| Assurance of her jubilant emprise, | |
| And it is clear to my long-searching eyes | |
| That love at last has might upon the skies. | 20 |
| The ice is runneled on the little pond; | |
| A telltale patter drips from off the trees; | |
| The air is touched with southland spiceries, | |
| As if but yesterday it tossed the frond | |
| Of pendent mosses where the live-oaks grow | 25 |
| Beyond Virginia and the Carolines, | |
| Or had its will among the fruits and vines | |
| Of aromatic isles asleep beyond | |
| Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. | |
| |
III
Soon shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee, | 30 |
| Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse; | |
| Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose | |
| Go honking northward over Tennessee; | |
| West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie, | |
| And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung, | 35 |
| And yonder where, gigantic, willful, young, | |
| Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates, | |
| With restless violent hands and casual tongue | |
| Moulding her mighty fates, | |
| The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen; | 40 |
| And like a larger sea, the vital green | |
| Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung | |
| Over Dakota and the prairie states. | |
| By desert people immemorial | |
| On Arizonan mesas shall be done | 45 |
| Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun; | |
| Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrifice | |
| More splendid, when the white Sierras call | |
| Unto the Rockies straightway to arise | |
| And dance before the unveiled ark of the year, | 50 |
| Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms, | |
| Unrolling rivers clear | |
| For flutter of broad phylacteries; | |
| While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas | |
| That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep, | 55 |
| To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep, | |
| And Mariposa through the purple calms | |
| Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms | |
| Where East and West are met,— | |
| A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set | 60 |
| To say that East and West are twain, | |
| With different loss and gain: | |
| The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet. | |
| |
IV
Alas! what sounds are these that come | |
| Sullenly over the Pacific seas,— | 65 |
| Sounds of ignoble battle, striking dumb | |
| The season's half-awakened ecstasies? | |
| Must I be humble, then, | |
| Now when my heart hath need of pride? | |
| Wild love falls on me from these sculptured men; | 70 |
| By loving much the land for which they died | |
| I would be justified. | |
| My spirit was away on pinions wide | |
| To soothe in praise of her its passionate mood | |
| And ease it of its ache of gratitude. | 75 |
| Too sorely heavy is the debt they lay | |
| On me and the companions of my day. | |
| I would remember now | |
| My country's goodliness, make sweet her name. | |
| Alas! what shade art thou | 80 |
| Of sorrow or of blame | |
| Liftest the lyric leafage from her brow, | |
| And pointest a slow finger at her shame? | |
| |
V
Lies! lies! It cannot be! The wars we wage | |
| Are noble, and our battles still are won | 85 |
| 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. | 90 |
| Here is her witness: this, her perfect son, | |
| This delicate and proud New England soul | |
| Who leads despisèd men, with just-unshackled feet, | |
| Up the large ways where death and glory meet, | |
| To show all peoples that our shame is done, | 95 |
| That once more we are clean and spirit-whole. | |
| |
VI
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 | 100 |
| 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 | 105 |
| 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, | 110 |
| 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 | 115 |
| Obscurely in a common grave with him | |
| The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust. | |
| Now limb doth mingle with dissolvèd limb | |
| In nature's busy old democracy | |
| To flush the mountain laurel when she blows | 120 |
| 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 | 125 |
| 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, | 130 |
| Whereof his band and he were the most holy sign. | |
| |
VII
O bitter, bitter shade! | |
| Wilt thou not put the scorn | |
| And instant tragic question from thine eyes? | |
| Do thy dark brows yet crave | 135 |
| That swift and angry stave— | |
| Unmeet for this desirous morn— | |
| That I have striven, striven to evade? | |
| Gazing on him, must I not deem they err | |
| Whose careless lips in street and shop aver | 140 |
| As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek | |
| Flush from the bronze, and his dead throat to speak? | |
| Surely some elder singer would arise, | |
| Whose harp hath leave to threaten and to mourn | |
| Above this people when they go astray. | 145 |
| Is Whitman, the strong spirit, overworn? | |
| Has Whittier put his yearning wrath away? | |
| I will not and I dare not yet believe! | |
| Though furtively the sunlight seems to grieve, | |
| And the spring-laden breeze | 150 |
| Out of the gladdening west is sinister | |
| With sounds of nameless battle overseas; | |
| Though when we turn and question in suspense | |
| If these things be indeed after these ways, | |
| And what things are to follow after these, | 155 |
| Our fluent men of place and consequence | |
| Fumble and fill their mouths with hollow phrase, | |
| Or for the end-all of deep arguments | |
| Intone their dull commercial liturgies— | |
| I dare not yet believe! My ears are shut! | 160 |
| I will not hear the thin satiric praise | |
| And muffled laughter of our enemies, | |
| Bidding us never sheathe our valiant sword | |
| Till we have changed our birthright for a gourd | |
| Of wild pulse stolen from a barbarian's hut; | 165 |
| Showing how wise it is to cast away | |
| The symbols of our spiritual sway, | |
| That so our hands with better ease | |
| May wield the driver's whip and grasp the jailer's keys. | |
| |
VIII
Was it for this our fathers kept the law? | 170 |
| This crown shall crown their struggle and their ruth? | |
| Are we the eagle nation Milton saw | |
| Mewing its mighty youth, | |
| Soon to possess the mountain winds of truth, | |
| And be a swift familiar of the sun | 175 |
| Where aye before God's face his trumpets run? | |
| Or have we but the talons and the maw, | |
| And for the abject likeness of our heart | |
| Shall some less lordly bird be set apart?— | |
| Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat? | 180 |
| Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with the bat? | |
| |
IX
Ah, no! | |
| We have not fallen so. | |
| We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know! | |
| 'T was only yesterday sick Cuba's cry | 185 |
| 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, | 190 |
| 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 hillslope at San Juan, | |
| By the unforgotten names of eager boys | 195 |
| 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, | 200 |
| 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, | 205 |
| 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. | 210 |
| 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. | 215 |
| The cup of trembling shall be drainèd 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 | 220 |
| 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, | 225 |
| Take heed! | |
| Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will smite. | |
