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.

Hail to you, comrades, who have won,
Where the torn lines of battle run
By tattered town and ruined mead,
The honour that men give with pride
To those who, daffing death aside,
Have done the valorous deed.

And has the war, then, brought to birth,
As flowers that spring from western earth
At summons of the pelting rain,
The courage that can force its way,
And hold the shadowing wings at bay,
And smile at lingering pain?

And is it true that only now
Life lifts from her heroic brow
The smothering shroud of deadly peace,
And laughs to sniff the morning air,
And bids a thousand bonfires flare
The news of her release?

Hell’s throat may swallow down its lie,
For men knew how to live and die
And take the gifts of motley fate,
Before the fiends of fear and greed,
Clasping, engendered from their seed
The hissing brood of hate.

Are they not sightless fools who crave
The sombre splendours of the grave
To prove that man is more than dust;
Who dabble fingers in the side
Of him who lives because he died,
Believing, when they must?

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.