Before A Midnight Breaks In Storm
Before a midnight breaks in storm,
Or herded sea in wrath,
Ye know what wavering gusts inform
The greater tempest's path;
Till the loosed wind
Drive all from mind,
Except Distress, which, so will prophets cry,
O'ercame them, houseless, from the unhinting sky.
Ere rivers league against the land
In piratry of flood,
Ye know what waters steal and stand
Where seldom water stood.
Yet who will note,
Till fields afloat,
And washen carcass and the returning well,
Trumpet what these poor heralds strove to tell?
Ye know who use the Crystal Ball
(To peer by stealth on Doom),
The Shade that, shaping first of all,
Prepares an empty room.
Then doth It pass
Like breath from glass,
But, on the extorted Vision bowed intent,
No man considers why It came or went.
Before the years reborn behold
Themselves with stranger eye,
And the sport-making Gods of old,
Like Samson slaying, die,
Many shall hear
The all-pregnant sphere,
Bow to the birth and sweat, but--speech denied--
Sit dumb or--dealt in part--fall weak and wide.
Yet instant to fore-shadowed need
The eternal balance swings;
That winged men, the Fates may breed
So soon as Fate hath wings.
These shall possess
Our littleness,
And in the imperial task (as worthy) lay
Up our lives' all to piece one giant Day.
An American
The American Spirit speaks:
"If the Led Striker call it a strike,
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, my Avatar."
Through many roads, by me possessed,
He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
And he the Text himself applies.
The Celt is in his heart and hand,
The Gaul is in his brain and nerve;
Where, cosmopolitanly planned,
He guards the Redskin's dry reserve.
His easy unswept hearth he lends
From Labrador to Guadeloupe;
Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,
He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.
Calm-eyed he scoffs at sword and crown,
Or panic-blinded stabs and slays:
Blatant he bids the world bow down,
Or cringing begs a crust of praise;
Or, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart,
He dubs his dreary brethren Kings.
His hands are black with blood -- his heart
Leaps, as a babe's, at little things.
But, through the shift of mood and mood,
Mine ancient humour saves him whole --
The cynic devil in his blood
That bids him mock his hurrying soul;
That bids him flout the Law he makes,
That bids him make the Law he flouts,
Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes
The drumming guns that -- have no doubts;
That checks him foolish -- hot and fond,
That chuckles through his deepest ire,
That gilds the slough of his despond
But dims the goal of his desire;
Inopportune, shrill-accented,
The acrid Asiatic mirth
That leaves him, careless 'mid his dead,
The scandal of the elder earth.
How shall he clear himself, how reach
Your bar or weighed defence prefer?
A brother hedged with alien speech
And lacking all interpreter.
Which knowledge vexes him a space;
But while Reproof around him rings,
He turns a keen untroubled face
Home, to the instant need of things.
Enslaved, illogical, elate,
He greets th' embarrassed Gods, nor fears
To shake the iron hand of Fate
Or match with Destiny for beers.
Lo, imperturbable he rules,
Unkempt, disreputable, vast --
And, in the teeth of all the schools,
I -- I shall save him at the last!
