Muse and Mint :: MISCELLANEOUS

MISCELLANEOUS

Walter Seymour Percy

THE SHUT AND OPEN HAND

THE FIST

I shut my eyes and opened them,

And while they were shut I saw

All the dread things that happen to men

In the name of cause and law.

I saw the tortured toil and travail

As the cost of bread and birth;

I saw the skein of fate unravel

Around the helpless earth;

A million who had nobly striven

Go down to grim defeat,

A million who their heart-blood given

Spurned from proud Honor’s seat;

Hope mocked and dear ideals shattered,

Truth crushed and crucified,

The fruits of love and labor scattered

And Greed o’er Goodness ride;

Curse like a ghoul despair and sorrow

Leave at the race’s door,

Pledging to-morrow and to-morrow

Cursing the world still more.

And as men were broken and stricken

I saw the darkness loom

To a frown of Hate and slowly thicken

To a spectral shape of Doom.

Shadows, thunders, griefs and grossness

Gathered in a blacker mass,

Life’s calamities and crosses

Wrapped the midnight of all space

Into—God! What awful likeness

Of a giant arm and wrist

Bulking blacker still to smite us

As a clenched terrific FIST!

THE OPEN HAND

I shut my eyes and opened them,

And when they were open I saw

All the glad things that happen to men

By a more benignant law.

I saw the smiling heaven bending

Above the fruitful land,

The beauty and the bounty blending,

The kiss of sea on strand;

The love in labor and the guerdon

Of home and wrought ideal,

The benison behind the burden,

The worth which works the weal;

The glory of the sacrificial,

The sanctity and song

Of Nature’s benedictive missal

O’er suffering and wrong.

I saw the good and grace of seasons

Aglow with golden yield,

And giving trust a thousand reasons

In flowerfest and field;

Until a misty plexus trembled

In midair and anon

A presence as of Love resembled

Diaphanous at dawn,

With morning vestments all a-shimmer,

Yet from whose potent charm

Of godlike gloriole and glimmer

There stretched a Titan ARM.

Earth and sky seemed coalescing

By filmy fingers spanned

And became as if in blessing

A mighty, OPEN HAND.

THE MAN-BIRD

The man-bird harnessed on his wings,

Empowered the impatient heart

And mounted into space as springs

Some captive eagle when released

From durance; but though human art

Might imitate, its genius ceased

Too short to force one secret of

The wild, fierce mastery of flight

In spiral sweeps away, above

The dizziest pinnacle of sight.

Man could but follow as he dared

With plane and engine, chance and nerve,

Yet like a Jove who boldly fared

Across the firmament supreme;

O’er vortexes with plunge and swerve,

O’er air-abysses where the scream

Of harpies echoed mocking forth

On ears too tense—yet ever on

O’er blinding South and blasting North,

Triumphant up or headlong down!

Ten thousand feet on high, ye gods,

Man tries conclusions for your realm

And gambles life at daring odds

To ride above the storm-strewn fleece;

A modern Jason at the helm

By siren lured like him of Greece

To desperate hazard; yet to fail

One pulse-beat for a thrilling glance—

Ah, well the boldest might turn pale

And choose ’twixt glory and mischance!

A moment poised the avian,

Then earthward swooped as never Jove

Rode down the vault of superman.

Wind-surges roared and clouds fled by,

Death raced beside and demons strove

To wrench one slender part or ply;

But flawless-sinewed, man and steed

Came flashing, wheeling down and down

With thrice a Roman courser’s speed

To earth and conqueror’s renown.

THE PHANTOM CAVALRY

What knows the world of battles? History writes

The deeds of men with blood and triumph hails

As trophy of their valor, armament

Or better fortune, thinking he who fights

With surer odds or tactics seldom fails

In the last holocaust of war’s event.

Impassioned eyes see not the shadow-shapes

That hover on the flank of charging hosts,

Ready to launch themselves as chance array;

Not one of all the mustered lines escapes

When mockery’s phantom centauri the boasts

Of martial pride downtrample and dismay.

Ah, Waterloo! where scarred battalions strove

And overwhelmed each other, blood-imbrued,

Hurling their troops with savage impotence—

The conquering cavalry which o’er thee drove

Was not the one the Corsican reviewed,

Nor yet the Iron Duke with grimmer sense.

Ah, Gettysburg! whose murderous brigades

Met in the shambles of a horror-hell

Or rushed like demons in the jaws of death—

Thy most resistless riders were the shades

Of other erstwhile terribles who fell

Drawing the sword from its envenomed sheath.

In vain each other’s throats the blue and grey

Sprang at like wolves of Winter mad for flesh,

And yet unsated till the kill-lust leaped

In exultation’s shout of victory!

Not all thy columns veteran or fresh

Could save the field by grisly corpses heaped

Against the spectral squadron which outrode

Both Fighting Phil and Morgan’s Men alike,

As on the Battle’s flank it weirdly hung

Or where the Dragon’s Teeth of Hate were sowed

Sprang up as Headless Horsemen armed to strike

And crumple back the charge by fury flung.

They loomed like apparitions, terror-born,

Yet ghastly real and dreadly sinister,

Abreast of every vanguard and redoubt;

O’er trench and belching gun they swept in scorn

Or carried panic to the broken rear

Till all was carnage, cowardice and rout.

Invincible formations, onsets’ surge

Of vengeance’ boldest fiends, manoeuvres dire

With compassing destruction—all before

The grewsome legionaries’ mounted charge

Were swept like chaff by maelstrom wind and fire

And rose again in prowess nevermore.

But on the ghost-troop galloped as of old

In every bloody battle, never dead

And never yet defeated; phantoms still

That gallop, gallop o’er the mortal mould

Of every tragic battlefield once red

With madmen’s life-blood at their country’s will!

THOU CALLEST ME BROTHER

Thou callest me thy human brother; well,

Am I less flesh and spirit than thyself

Or less entitled so to humbly dwell

In honest peace and plenty that to delve

Is equally as noble as to draw

From the rich depths digged up? Or is the law

Of brotherhood pretense?—Our separate lots

But differ as our make, not as our meed.

Do brothers share according to their thoughts

Or in the rough according to their need?

If thou dost think thee finer in the end

Than him thou flatterest, thou art no friend.

Thou callest me thy brother and dost praise

My struggle to get even, holding fast

Thyself the odds of vantage, so the race

Is to the swift and strong—and he is last

Whose toiling body forged the chariot-wheel

That rolls thee on to fortune. It were base

To make the difference one of feast and fast,

Of full and empty measure of our weal;

For I am he who’s spent—the spender thou;

Yet thou dost call me brother! Heaven, how?

THE SINGING DEATH

Men whisper low of spectres, calibans

And curses almost devilish with doom,

Mysterious fiends like hellhounds, werwolves, ghouls

And other nameless shapes as jinns and janns

That spring from demon-haunts and skulk or loom

To terror-stricken fancy of weak souls.

But none have named the scourge of Singing Death,

The dread reality which out of hell

Comes forth as often as the blood-lust burns;

Foulness and fury volcanize its breath

As, ravening for flesh insatiate, fell

It swoops, devours and bloodier returns.

An army gathers flushed with high resolve

And there is martial music and display

Of glory ominous with human fate;

For ere the dial shall again revolve

The Singing Death exultantly will prey

Upon the host till horror outdoes hate.

A floating citadel superbly steers

Her ocean-course with victory-flags unfurled,

Alike to sea and foe invincible;

Yet somewhere from the blue as she careers

The Singing Death by Titan forces hurled

Will scream above her decks with damning knell.

Hark! Hear you it like vomit from the throat

Of Hades hurtling through the sulphurous air,

With cross between the moan of Manes’ wraith,

The torture of Inferno and the note

Of vulture-torn Prometheus’ despair?

Ah! ’Tis the cannon missile’s Singing Death!

It plays no diapason as the roar

It leaves behind where thunders loud intone,

Nor as the mighty swell of organ-reeds;

But all the stops of battle rising o’er,

It shrieks its way to finish with the groan

Of mortal agony where valor bleeds.

It sings not as a master for applause,

With perfect-voiced-and-chested range of gift

Till song becomes the triumph of all time;

But, rather, ’tis a dirge which discord flaws

With time’s infernal arts lest God uplift

The world by love to Peace’s choir sublime.

THE OLD MOON IN THE ARMS OF THE NEW

The young moon rises low

Just where the passing earth

Has stood aside to help it grow,

Once it has come to birth.

Yet on the old moon’s back

The image of the new

Reflected is with lustre-lack

From earth it kindled to.

In gleaming arms of youth

The sire is embraced;

The silver edge of ancient truth

In younger truth is traced.

The clasp of morning love

Embosoms that of eve;

And memory’s in the crescent of

Old age’s child-reprieve.

A sickly sickle frames

The lusty one that reaps;

So power, pleasure, fortune, fame’s

Pale as the keener sweeps.

Our latest wish infolds

The hope that’s almost spent,

And every rim of promise holds

The past to future bent.

But not so feebly say

Youth hastens on the heels

Of age, but that ’tis nature’s way

Our myriad orb reveals.

Transcriber’s Notes

All poetry spacing and minor errors in the original have been maintained.

Clyx.com