The Messenger
By George Sterling
There soared an eagle in the West,
With mighty sunlight on his breast
And music in his wings.
Far-off, within the ravished East,
He saw the vultures at their feast,
Spread by the war of kings.
The very world was black and red
With furrows of the mangled dead,
On whom the red dust lay.
From all the lands a wailing came;
A million homesteads passed in flame;
The vultures tore their prey.
He gazed, and hesitant awhile,
Beheld the carrion horde defile
The wounded and the slain.
The feast grew fouler with the years;
The very heavens were gray with tears
Above that realm of pain ***
Now, doubt and hesitation past,
The destined war-road rings at last
With onset of his young.
Lo! the swift eaglets follow him
To where all Europe's skies are dim
With cannon breath upflung.
Freeborn, oh soar in boundless light
Above, the world's despotic night
Till the new dawn advance!
Cry to the foul and feasting horde
Our thunders follow and our sword,
In Love's deliverance!
****
Eternal spirit of our Land,
By whom the guarded seas are spanned,
Grant to the coming years
The liberty our fathers sought—
The liberty by man unbought
Except by blood and tears!
The San Francisco Chronicle, CXIII, 170 (4 July, 1918) 1.
Also included in:
Mighels, Ella Sterling ed. Literary California: Poetry, Prose, and Portraits. San Francisco: Harr Wagner Publishing Co, 1918.