Memorial Day, 1901
By George Sterling
To each the city of his dream!
Far lifts the purple of its walls,
And pure its domes eternal gleam
Above the promise of its halls.
Unto each soul her chosen ways
And travail upward from the night.
Enough, that from her dark of days
She have in quest the trusted light.
Tho' in futility she hold,
To heights eternally afar,
Eyes that the waited morning's gold
Bless never—she hath stood a star.
Weary the ways whereon we strive
To heirdom of the ends of strife:
Sabre and cannon, lance and gyve
Prepare the after-peace of life.
Irrevocable, fraught with dread,
The mandates of the cosmic plan
Await in tracereies of red
The men that frame the House of Man,
Whereof as holly lies the stone
Deep in obscurieis of dust
As that whereby the years shall own
The far fulfillment of the Trust.
Ah, dream of unavailing eyes!
Ah, glory of the lucent cross
By hope foreseen on future skies,
To hush the memory of loss!
The cannon take their pall of rust,
Its gentler harvests wait the sword,
The deep of war's recurrent lust
Submissive to a deeper Word.
As honored by that farther day
Shall be the warrior as the bard;
And equal, shall its wisdom say,
The hands that build, the hands that guard,
Large writ in blood their annals burn,
And hallowed, tho' the morning star
Of Peace arise, and races earn
The red affranchisement of war.
O vision of a nation crowned
With purer light by lasting Peace,
'Neath altered skies whence Battle frowned
And Pain had terrible release!
Deep in our dark of strife and wrong,
Blinded we loose a sanguine flood,
Entreating from our Fates ere long
The guerdon of the holy blood-
Diviner cities wrought anew
In all that Love and Art may lend,
And heights of freedom whereunto
We deem the toiling ages trend.
Pleasant, O Love, thy garden-close
And murmur of the untroubled dove,
But sterner walls constrain thy foes,
And other sounds than thine, O Love!—
Incitement of the whining fife
And mutter of the troubled drum,
Clamor of life that reels from life,
Cannon that smite all clamor dumb!
Supreme, O Art! thy splendors blaze,
And fair the shrine thy sons attain;
But ruder hands on darker ways
Ensure the incomparable fane.
(So gently came the feet of Spring
Along the wintry ways afar,
So rich with song the valleys ring,
We deem we have but dreamt of war.)
And we, above the war-won graves,
Stand conscious of their homage due;
We wander where the cypress waves,
Sad for the dead we never knew—
From whom we gathered, in regret,
Tribute of unregretful breath;
On whom the panoply we set
That molders on the road of Death.
So now their time held consecrate
We greet in hall and temple, or
Where Summer, calling at the gate,
Has thrown her blossoms in before.
And rose and marble clasp the dead,
And gleam about the ghostly court,
To quieter camp the soldier led,
The seaman to a farther port.
How deep they lie from voice or tear!
With silence how supremely blest!—
So far in peace they cannot hear
The grieving pines above their rest.
Tho' strongly on their holy place
The cumbrous nations prove their might,
Unheard the battle-thunders pace
Above the nations of the night.
A sense of this their dreamlessness
Arises to the mortal brow.
We deem their quietudes confess
To war's futility, that now
Above the dust so swift to slay
Alight the lily's tender snows,
And on the long-forgiven clay
Its foeman's children loose the rose.
Set to duration of the bronze,
The soldier stands all ages' guest:
Harness of high renown he dons,
But sweeter fame the flowers attest.
* * *
Content, as though for valor crowned,
Austere, untroubled, rest the dead—-
The citadel of silence found,
And all its armament of dread.
Before whose Imminence we pause
And question far the nightward posts,
And seek with darkened eyes the cause
Of menace to the mortal hosts:
Upon Whose war our foe Is sent;
What purpose his invasions prove;
Or issues of the dim intent
Wherewith his ghostly legions move.
But never answer dayward ran,
Nor message from the eternal scouts,
Resolving to our anxious van
The riddle of the dark redoubts.
Perchance they know the secret sought,
(Tidings we reach from Time to share;
That bought with life were cheaply bought),
But find the message dread to bear.
Perchance, to that imputed night
The future lies too sadly clear;
Perchance the soldier's better sight
Confirms the Prophecy of Fear,
Revealing, to the spirit's quest,
The Mother in whose need the swords
He faced with unregarded breast,
In vassalage to monstrous lords.
For in the prophet's light of dream,
She stands immanacled in gold,
Disclosing, as the sages deem,
Decadence from the worth of old.
O vision of insurgent doom,
And thunders holden to that day!
Portentous in that farther gloom
The Titans bend above their prey.
And all that sky is dark with wings
That bear to feasts of infamy
And shame of miconjectured things
The vampire brood of luxury.
Lo! Power, with encrimsoned hands,
The blood-draught of his shambles sips;
And Justice at her altar stands
And stammers with polluted lips;
Lo! man to Man as alien seems,
Nor seeks, for serfdom to delight,
Divergence of the chartered streams
That sate the languid parasite;
But sits the throne of privilege,
And claims all lordship of the soil,
And wrings from penury the pledge
Of lifelong servitude to toil,
Forgetting, in the lust for pow'r,
The peoples faithless to their trust,
Who joined, at Time's avenging hour,
The nations touched by Time to dust. . . .
So dark the doom our sages feel
Impendent; but the Fates have stood
Unknown of man, nor deign to seal
The auguries of likelihood.
For peril that the seer foresees,
Perils transcending intervene;
Transition holds her mysteries
Accordant to the unforeseen.
And evil comes with good allied,
Nor hath supremacy of scope.
The Builder and the Plan abide.
We hope, who are the sons of Hope.
* * *
O timeless Light beyond the years,
Illume Thy mysteries of fate!
Absolve the future of its fears,
And loose us from the law of hate!
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