Poems of To-Day: an Anthology. Various

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        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        And these with joy their sceptres yield, withdrawn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.

        Oh shall I never never be home again!

        Meadows of England shining in the rain

        Spread wide your daisied lawns: your ramparts green

        With briar fortify, with blossom screen

        Till my far morning—and O streams that slow

        And pure and deep through plains and playlands go,

        For me your love and all your kingcups store,

        And—dark militia of the southern shore,

        Old fragrant friends—preserve me the last lines

        Of that long saga which you sang me, pines,

        When, lonely boy, beneath the chosen tree

        I listened, with my eyes upon the sea.

        O traitor pines, you sang what life has found

        The falsest of fair tales.

        Earth blew a far-horn prelude all around,

        That native music of her forest home,

        While from the sea's blue fields and syren dales

        Shadows and light noon spectres of the foam

        Riding СКАЧАТЬ