Читать книгу Poems of To-Day: an Anthology - Various - Страница 24

  What gods have met in battle to arouse

  This whirling shadow of invisible things,

  These hosts that writhe amid the shattered sods?

  O Father, and O Mother of the gods,

  Is there some trouble in the heavenly house?

  We who are captained by its unseen kings

  Wonder what thrones are shaken in the skies,

  What powers who held dominion o'er our will

  Let fall the sceptre, and what destinies

  The younger gods may drive us to fulfil.

  Have they not swayed us, earth's invisible lords,

  With whispers and with breathings from the dark?

  The very border stones of nations mark

  Where silence swallowed some wild prophet's words

  That rang but for an instant and were still,

  Yet were so burthened with eternity,

  They maddened all who heard to work their will,

  To raise the lofty temple on the hill,

  And many a glittering thicket of keen swords

  Flashed out to make one law for land and sea,

  That earth might move with heaven in company.

  The cities that to myriad beauty grew

  Were altars raised unto old gods who died,

  And they were sacrificed in ruins to

  The younger gods who took their place of pride;

  They have no brotherhood, the deified,

  No high companionship of throne by throne,

  But will their beauty still to be alone.

  What is a nation but a multitude

  United by some god-begotten mood,

  Some hope of liberty or dream of power

  That have not with each other brotherhood

  But warred in spirit from their natal hour,

  Their hatred god-begotten as their love

  Reverberations of eternal strife?

  For all that fury breathed in human life,

  Are ye not guilty, answer, ye above?

  Ah, no, the circle of the heavenly ones,

  That ring of burning, grave, inflexible powers,

  Array in harmony amid the deep

  The shining legionaries of the suns,

  That through their day from dawn to twilight keep

  The peace of heaven, and have no feuds like ours.

  The morning Stars their labours of the dawn

  Close at the advent of the Solar Kings,

  And these with joy their sceptres yield, withdrawn

  When the still Evening Stars begin their reign,

  And twilight time is thrilled with homing wings

  To the All-Father being turned again.

  No, not on high begin divergent ways,

  The galaxies of interlinked lights

  Rejoicing on each other's beauty gaze,

  'Tis we who do make errant all the rays

  That stream upon us from the astral heights.

  Love in our thickened air too redly burns;

  And unto vanity our beauty turns;

  Wisdom, that gently whispers us to part

  From evil, swells to hatred in the heart.

  Dark is the shadow of invisible things

  On us who look not up, whose vision fails.

  The glorious shining of the heavenly kings

  To mould us in their image naught avails,

  They weave a robe of many-coloured fire

  To garb the spirits thronging in the deep,

  And in the upper air its splendours keep

  Pure and unsullied, but below it trails

  Darkling and glimmering in our earthly mire.

  With eyes bent ever earthwards we are swayed

  But by the shadows of eternal light,

  And shadow against shadow is arrayed

  So that one dark may dominate the night.

  Though kindred are the lights that cast the shade,

  We look not up, nor see how, side by side,

  The high originals of all our pride

  In crowned and sceptred brotherhood are throned,

  Compassionate of our blindness and our hate

  That own the godship but the love disowned.

  Ah, let us for a little while abate

  The outward roving eye, and seek within

  Where spirit unto spirit is allied;

  There, in our inmost being, we may win

  The joyful vision of the heavenly wise

  To see the beauty in each other's eyes.