The Power Of Hell

“There is no place,” he said,
“For love or pity here;
We dread and only dread
The moods that once were dear.

“We break the ancient spell,
And arm to take our part
Against the power of Hell.”
And Hell was in his heart.

Spring, and the wispy clouds that fade away
And draw the ecstatic soul in pain to aspire
In maddening flight through heaven's thin flood of fire
To melt in rapture at the heart of day,
The powers of the world that promise and betray
Have dragged me from you in their icy ire
And set me spinning at their loom, for hire,
The shroud in which my senses must decay.
For hire I give myself, and cannot tell
If the blind force that flings me in the chest
Have power or will to pay the bargained price,
Yet for a word of love I gladly quell
The quivering hope of not inactive rest
And very humbly make my sacrifice.

Grant me a moment of peace,
Let me but open mine eyes,
Forgetting the empire of lies
And warfare's majestic increase
Of national folly and hate;
Ere I return to my fate,
Grant me a moment of peace.

To what is I would turn from what seems
From a world where men fall and adore
The god that Fear shuddering bore
To Greed in the desert of dreams,
Unholy, inhuman, impure;
From the State to the loves that endure,
To what is I would turn from what seems.

No man has been richer than I,
Though he staggered with infinite gold
And bought of whatever is sold
Of the beauty that money can buy.
In the wealth that is lost in the mart
And is stored in the innermost heart
No man has been richer than I.

Humbly, a pilgrim, I stood,
Weary and hungry and lame,
And out of the multitude came
Friends who were better than good,
Friends who would not be denied
Where by the palpitant tide
Humbly, a pilgrim, I stood.

Now to my army of friends
A handful of petals I fling,
Strays of perennial spring,
Weeds, but the lover who sends
Bled that each blossom might live.
This is myself that I give
Now to my army of friends.

Comrade in exile, to you
Chiefly the gift should belong,
You who will hear in my song
Echoes of days that we knew
Blue and deep-droning and clear
Far in the hills that are dear,
Comrade in exile, to you.

Pause and remember them now,
Plunge, as you dived in the stream,
To the sweet cool depth of your dream.
The drooping, sheltering bough,
The brown rock lettered above,
The still interfusion of love,
Pause and remember them now.

There as we lay in the cave
And saw, as an eye of the dark,
The camp-fire's slumbering spark,
And heard the cataract rave,
Your soul and my soul were as one;
Our life in one channel has run
There as we lay in the cave.

Forth to the task of a man!
Youth and the valour of youth,
Force and the ardour of truth
Give you a place in the van,
Love keeping step at your side
Chanting aloud as you stride
Forth to the task of a man.

What of these tender feet
   That have never toddled yet?
   What dances shall they beat,
   With what red vintage wet?
In what wild way will they march or stray, by what sly paynims met?

   The toil of it none may share;
   By yourself must the way be won
   Through fervid or frozen air
   Till the overland journey's done;
And I would not take, for your own dear sake, one thorn from your track,
   my son.

   Go forth to your hill and dale,
   Yet take in your hand from me
   A staff when your footsteps fail,
   A weapon if need there be;
'Twill hum in your ear when the foeman's near, athirst for the victory.

   In the desert of dusty death
   It will point to the hidden spring;
   Should you weary and fail for breath,
   It will burgeon and branch and swing
Till you sink to sleep in its shadow deep to the sound of its murmuring.

   You must face the general foe --
   A phantom pale and grim.
   If you flinch at his glare, he'll grow
   And gather your strength to him;
But your power will rise if you laugh in his eyes and away in a mist
   he'll swim.

   To your freeborn soul be true --
   Fling parchment in the fire;
   Men's laws are null for you,
   For a word of Love is higher,
And can you do aught, when He rules your thought, but follow your own desire?

   You will dread no pinching dearth
   In the home where you love to lie,
   For your floor will be good brown earth
   And your roof the open sky.
There'll be room for all at your festival when the heart-red wine runs high.

   Joy to you, joy and strife
   And a golden East before,
   And the sound of the sea of life
   In your ears when you reach the shore,
And a hope that still with as good a will you may fight as you fought of yore.