The Ascent of Man
Mathilde Blind




Mathilde Blind

The Ascent of Man





THE ASCENT OF MAN





PRELUDE



WINGS

		Ascend, oh my Soul, with the wings of the lark ascend!
		Soaring away and away far into the blue.
		Or with the shrill seagull to the breakers bend,
		Or with the bee, where the grasses and field-flowers blend,
		Drink out of golden cups of the honey-dew.

		Ascend, oh my Soul, on the wings of the wind as it blows,
		Striking wild organ-blasts from the forest trees,
		Or on the zephyr bear love of the rose to the rose,
		Or with the hurricane sower cast seed as he goes
		Limitless ploughing the leagues of the sibilant seas.

		Ascend, oh my Soul, on the wings of the choral strain,
		Invisible tier above tier upbuilding sublime;
		Note as it scales after note in a rhythmical chain
		Reaching from chaos and welter of struggle and pain,
		Far into vistas empyreal receding from time.

		Ascend! take wing on the thoughts of the Dead, my Soul,
		Breathing in colour and stone, flashing through epic and song:
		Thoughts that like avalanche snows gather force as they roll,
		Mighty to fashion and knead the phenomenal throng
		Of generations of men as they thunder along.




PART I



		As compressed within the bounded shell
		Boundless Ocean seems to surge and swell,
		Haunting echoes of an infinite whole
		Moan and murmur through Man's finite soul.







CHAUNTS OF LIFE



I

		Struck out of dim fluctuant forces and shock of electrical vapour,
		Repelled and attracted the atoms flashed mingling in union primeval,
		And over the face of the waters far heaving in limitless twilight
		Auroral pulsations thrilled faintly, and, striking the blank heaving surface,
		The measureless speed of their motion now leaped into light on the waters.
		And lo, from the womb of the waters, upheaved in volcanic convulsion,
		Ribbed and ravaged and rent there rose bald peaks and the rocky
		Heights of confederate mountains compelling the fugitive vapours
		To take a form as they passed them and float as clouds through the azure.
		Mountains, the broad-bosomed mothers of torrents and rivers perennial,
		Feeding the rivers and plains with patient persistence, till slowly,
		In the swift passage of æons recorded in stone by Time's graver,
		There germ grey films of the lichen and mosses and palm-ferns gigantic,
		And jungle of tropical forest fantastical branches entwining,
		And limitless deserts of sand and wildernesses primeval.


II

		Lo, moving o'er chaotic waters,
		Love dawned upon the seething waste,
		Transformed in ever new avatars
		It moved without or pause or haste:
		Like sap that moulds the leaves of May
		It wrought within the ductile clay.

		And vaguely in the pregnant deep,
		Clasped by the glowing arms of light
		From an eternity of sleep
		Within unfathomed gulfs of night
		A pulse stirred in the plastic slime
		Responsive to the rhythm of Time.

		Enkindled in the mystic dark
		Life built herself a myriad forms,
		And, flashing its electric spark
		Through films and cells and pulps and worms,
		Flew shuttlewise above, beneath,
		Weaving the web of life and death.

		And multiplying in the ocean,
		Amorphous, rude, colossal things
		Lolled on the ooze in lazy motion,
		Armed with grim jaws or uncouth wings;
		Helpless to lift their cumbering bulk
		They lurch like some dismasted hulk.

		And virgin forest, verdant plain,
		The briny sea, the balmy air,
		Each blade of grass and globe of rain,
		And glimmering cave and gloomy lair
		Began to swarm with beasts and birds,
		With floating fish and fleet-foot herds.

		The lust of life's delirious fires
		Burned like a fever in their blood,
		Now pricked them on with fierce desires,
		Now drove them famishing for food,
		To seize coy females in the fray,
		Or hotly hunted hunt for prey.

		And amorously urged them on
		In wood or wild to court their mate,
		Proudly displaying in the sun
		With antics strange and looks elate,
		The vigour of their mighty thews
		Or charm of million-coloured hues.

		There crouching 'mid the scarlet bloom,
		Voluptuously the leopard lies,
		And through the tropic forest gloom
		The flaming of his feline eyes
		Stirs with intoxicating stress
		The pulses of the leopardess.

		Or two swart bulls of self-same age
		Meet furiously with thunderous roar,
		And lash together, blind with rage,
		And clanging horns that fain would gore
		Their rival, and so win the prize
		Of those impassive female eyes.

		Or in the nuptial days of spring,
		When April kindles bush and brier,
		Like rainbows that have taken wing,
		Or palpitating gems of fire,
		Bright butterflies in one brief day
		Live but to love and pass away.

		And herds of horses scour the plains,
		The thickets scream with bird and beast
		The love of life burns in their veins,
		And from the mightiest to the least
		Each preys upon the other's life
		In inextinguishable strife.

		War rages on the teeming earth;
		The hot and sanguinary fight
		Begins with each new creature's birth:
		A dreadful war where might is right;
		Where still the strongest slay and win,
		Where weakness is the only sin.

		There is no truce to this drawn battle,
		Which ends but to begin again;
		The drip of blood, the hoarse death-rattle,
		The roar of rage, the shriek of pain,
		Are rife in fairest grove and dell,
		Turning earth's flowery haunts to hell.

		A hell of hunger, hatred, lust,
		Which goads all creatures here below,
		Or blindworm wriggling in the dust,
		Or penguin in the Polar snow:
		A hell where there is none to save,
		Where life is life's insatiate grave.

		And in the long portentous strife,
		Where types are tried even as by fire,
		Where life is whetted upon life
		And step by panting step mounts higher,
		Apes lifting hairy arms now stand
		And free the wonder-working hand.

		They raise a light, aërial house
		On shafts of widely branching trees,
		Where, harboured warily, each spouse
		May feed her little ape in peace,
		Green cradled in his heaven-roofed bed,
		Leaves rustling lullabies o'erhead.

		And lo, 'mid reeking swarms of earth
		Grim struggling in the primal wood,
		A new strange creature hath its birth:
		Wild – stammering – nameless – shameless – nude;
		Spurred on by want, held in by fear,
		He hides his head in caverns drear.

		Most unprotected of earth's kin,
		His fight for life that seems so vain
		Sharpens his senses, till within
		The twilight mazes of his brain,
		Like embryos within the womb,
		Thought pushes feelers through the gloom.

		And slowly in the fateful race
		It grows unconscious, till at length
		The helpless savage dares to face
		The cave-bear in his grisly strength;
		For stronger than its bulky thews
		He feels a force that grows with use.

		From age to dumb unnumbered age,
		By dim gradations long and slow,
		He reaches on from stage to stage,
		Through fear and famine, weal and woe
		And, compassed round with danger, still
		Prolongs his life by craft and skill.

		With cunning hand he shapes the flint,
		He carves the horn with strange device,
		He splits the rebel block by dint
		Of effort – till one day there flies
		A spark of fire from out the stone:
		Fire which shall make the world his own.


III

		And from the clash of warring Nature's strife
		Man day by day wins his imperilled life;
		For, goaded on by want, he hunts the roe,
		Chases the deer, and lays the wild boar low.
		In his rude boat made of the hollow trees
		He drifts adventurous on the unoared seas,
		And, as he tilts upon the rocking tide,
		Catches the glistening fish that flash and glide
		Innumerably through the waters wide.
		He'll fire the bush whose flames shall help him fel
		The trunks to prop his roof, where he may dwell
		Beside the bubbling of a crystal well,
		Sheltered from drenching rains or noxious glare
		When the sun holds the zenith. Delving there,
		His cumbered wife, whose multifarious toil
		Seems never done, breaks the rich virgin soil,
		And in the ashes casts the casual seeds
		Of feathered grass and efflorescent weeds;
		When, as with thanks, the bounteous earth one morn
		Returns lush blades of life-sustaining corn.
		And while the woman digs and plants, and twines
		To precious use long reeds and pliant bines,
		He – having hit the brown bird on the wing,
		And slain the roe – returns at evening,
		And gives his spoil unto her, to prepare
		The succulent, wildwood scented, simmering fare,
		While with impatient sniffs and eager-eyed
		His bronze-limbed children gather to his side.
		And, when the feast is done, all take their ease,
		Lulled by the sing-song of the evening breeze
		And murmuring undertones of many-foliaged trees;
		While here and there through rifts of green the sky
		Casts its blue glance like an all-seeing eye.
		But though by stress of want and poignant need
		Man tames the wolf-sprung hound and rearing steed,
		Pens up the ram, and yokes the deep-horned ox,
		And through wide pastures shepherds woolly flocks;
		Though age by age, through discipline of toil,
		Man wring a richer harvest from the soil,
		And in the grim and still renewing fight
		Slays loathly worms and beasts of gruesome might
		By the close-knitted bondage of the clan,
		Which adding up the puny strength of man
		Makes thousands move with one electric thrill
		Of simultaneous, energetic will;
		Yet still behind the narrow borderland
		Where in security he seems to stand,
		His apprehensive life is compassed round
		By baffling mysteries he cannot sound,
		Where, big with terrors and calamities,
		The future like a foe in ambush lies:
		A muffled foe, that seems to watch and wait
		With the Medusa eyes of stony fate. —
		Great floods o'erwhelm and ruin his ripening grain,
		His boat is shattered by the hurricane,
		From the rent cloud the tameless lightning springs —
		Heaven's flame-mouthed dragon with a roar of wings —
		And fires his hut and simple household things;
		Until before his horror-stricken eyes
		The stored-up produce of long labour lies,
		A heap of ashes smoking 'neath the skies. —
		Or now the pastures where his flocks did graze,
		Parched, withered, shrivelled by the imminent blaze
		Of the great ball of fire that glares above,
		Glow dry like iron heated in a stove;
		Turning upon themselves, the tortured sheep,
		With blackening tongues, drop heap on gasping heap,
		Their rotting flesh sickens the wind that moans
		And whistles poisoned through their chattering bones;
		While the thin shepherd, staring sick and gaunt,
		Will search the thorns for berries, or yet haunt
		The stony channels of some river-bed
		Where filtering fresh perchance a liquid thread
		Of water may run clear. – Now dark o'erhead,
		Thickening with storm, the wintry clouds will loom,
		And wrap the land in weeds of mournful gloom;
		Shrouding the sun and every lesser light
		Till earth with all her aging woods grows white,
		And hurrying streams stop fettered in their flight.
		Then famished beasts freeze by the frozen lakes,
		And thick as leaves dead birds bestrew the brakes;
		And, cowering blankly by the flickering flame,
		Man feels a presence without form or name,
		When by the bodies of his speechless dead
		In barbarous woe he bows his stricken head.
		Then in the hunger of his piteous love
		He sends his thought, winged like a carrier dove —
		Through the unanswering silence void and vast,
		Whence from dim hollows blows an icy blast —
		To bring some sign, some little sign at last,
		From his lost chiefs – the beautiful, the brave —
		Vanished like bubbles on a breaking wave,
		Lost in the unfathomed darkness of the grave.
		When, lo, behold beside him in the night, —
		Softly beside him, like the noiseless light
		Of moonbeams moving o'er the glimmering floor
		That come unbidden through the bolted door, —
		The lonely sleeper sees the lost one stand
		Like one returned from some dim, distant land,
		Bending towards him with his outstretched hand.
		But when he fain would grasp it in his own,
		He melts into thin moonshine and is gone —
		A spirit now, who on the other shore
		Of death hunts happily for evermore. —
		A Son of Life, but dogged, while he draws breath,
		By her inseparable shadow – death,
		Man, feeble Man, whom unknown Fates appal,
		With prayer and praise seeks to propitiate all
		The spirits, who, for good or evil plight,
		Bless him in victory or in sickness smite.
		Those are his Dead who, wrapped in grisly shrouds,
		Now ride phantasmal on the rushing clouds,
		Souls of departed chiefs whose livid forms
		He sees careering on the reinless storms,
		Wild, spectral huntsmen who tumultuously,
		With loud halloo and shrilly echoing cry,
		Follow the furious chase, with the whole pack
		Of shadowy hounds fierce yelping in the track
		Of wolves and bears as shadowy as the hosts
		Who lead once more as unsubstantial ghosts
		Their lives of old as restlessly they fly
		Across the wildernesses of the sky.
		When the wild hunt is done, shall they not rest
		Their heads upon some swan-white maiden's breast,
		And quaff their honeyed mead with godlike zest
		In golden-gated Halls whence they may see
		The earth and marvellous secrets of the Sea
		Whereon the clouds will lie with grey wings furled,
		And in whose depths, voluminously curled,
		The serpent looms whose girth engirds the world?
		Far, far above now in supernal power
		Those spirits rule the sunshine and the shower!
		How shall he win their favour; yea, how move
		To pity the unpitying gods above,
		The Dæmon rulers of life's fitful dream,
		Who sway men's destinies, and still would seem
		To treat them lightly as a game of chance,
		The sport of whim and blindfold circumstance —
		The irresponsible, capricious gods,
		So quick to please or anger; whose sharp rods
		Are storms and lightnings launched from cloven skies;
		Who feast upon the shuddering victim's cries,
		The smell of blood, and human sacrifice.
		But ever as Man grows they grow with him;
		Terrific, cruel, gentle, bright, or dim,
		With eyes of dove-like mercy, hands of wrath,
		Procession-like, they hover o'er his path
		And, changing with the gazer, borrow light
		From their rapt devotee's adoring sight.
		And Ormuzd, Ashtaroth, Osiris, Baal —
		Love spending gods and gods of blood and wail —
		Look down upon their suppliant from the skies
		With his own magnified, responsive eyes.
		For Man, from want and pressing hunger freed,
		Begins to feel another kind of need,
		And in his shaping brain and through his eyes
		Nature, awakening, sees her blue-arched skies;
		The Sun, his life-begetter, isled in space;
		The Moon, the Measurer of his span of days;
		The immemorial stars who pierce his night
		With inklings of things vast and infinite.
		All shows of heaven and earth that move and pass
		Take form within his brain as in a glass.
		The tidal thunder of the sea now roars
		And breaks symphonious on a hundred shores;
		The fitful flutings of the vagrant breeze
		Strike gusts of sound from virgin forest trees;
		White leaping waters of wild cataracts fall
		From crag and jag in lapses musical,
		And streams meandering amid daisied leas
		Throb with the pulses of tumultuous seas.
		From hills and valleys smoking mists arise,
		Steeped in pale gold and amethystine dyes.
		The land takes colour from him, and the flowers
		Laugh in his path like sun-dyed April showers.
		The moving clouds in calm or thunderstorm,
		All shows of things in colour, sound, or form
		Moulded mysteriously, are freshly wrought
		Within the fiery furnace of his thought.


IV

		No longer Nature's thrall,
		Man builds the city wall
		That shall withstand her league of levelling storms;
		He builds tremendous tombs
		Where, hid in hoarded glooms,
		His dead defy corruption with her worms:
		High towers he rears and bulks of glowing stone,
		Where the king rules upon a golden throne.

		Creature of hopes and fears,
		Of mirth and many tears,
		He makes himself a thousand costly altars,
		Whence smoke of sacrifice,
		Fragrant with myrrh and spice,
		Ascends to heaven as the flame leaps and falters;
		Where, like a king above the Cloud control,
		God sits enthroned and rules Man's subject soul.

		Yet grievous here below
		And manifold Man's woe;
		Though he can stay the flood and bind the waters,
		His hand he shall not stay
		That bids him sack and slay
		And turn the waving fields to fields of slaughters;
		And, as he reaps War's harvest grim and gory,
		Commits a thousand crimes and calls it glory.

		Vast empires fall and rise,
		As when in sunset skies
		The monumental clouds lift flashing towers
		With turrets, spires, and bars
		Lit by confederate stars
		Till the bright rack dissolves in flying showers:
		Kingdoms on kingdoms have their fleeting day,
		Dazzle the conquered world, and pass away.

		In golden Morning lands
		The blazing crowns change hands,
		From mystic Ind to fleshly Babylon,
		Assyria, Palestine
		Armed with her book divine,
		Dread Persia whose fleet chariots charged and won
		Pale Continents where prostrate monarchs kneel
		Before the flash of her resistless steel.

		As one by one they start
		With proudly beating heart
		Fast in the furious, fierce-contested race,
		Where neck to neck they strain
		Deliriously to gain
		The winning post of power, the meed of praise;
		Some drop behind, fall, or are trampled down
		While the proud victor grasps the laurel crown.

		Not only great campaigns
		Shall glorify their reigns,
		But high-towered cities wondrous to behold,
		With gardens poised in air
		Like bowers of Eden fair,
		With brazen gates and shrines of beaten gold,
		And Palace courts whose constellated lights
		Shine on black slaves and cringing satellites.

		Eclipsing with her fate
		Each power and rival state
		With her unnumbered stretch of generations,
		A sand-surrounded isle
		Fed by the bounteous Nile,
		Egypt confronts Sahara – sphinx of nations;
		Taught by the floods that make or mar her shore,
		She scans the stars and hoards mysterious lore.

		Hers are imperial halls
		With strangely scriptured walls
		And long perspectives of memorial places,
		Where the hushed daylight glows
		On mute colossal rows
		Of clawed wild beasts featured with female faces,
		And realmless kings inane whose stony eyes
		Have watched the hour-glass of the centuries.

		There in the rainless sands
		The toil of captive hands,
		That aye must do as their taskmaster bids,
		Through years of dusty days
		Brick by slow brick shall raise
		The incarnate pride of kings – the Pyramids —
		Linked with some name synonymous with slaughter
		Time has effaced like a name writ in water.

		For ever with fateful shocks,
		Roar as of hurtling rocks,
		Start fresh embattled hosts with flags unfurled,
		To meet on battle-fields
		With clash of spears and shields,
		Widowing the world of men to win the world:
		The hissing air grows dark with iron rain,
		And groans the earth beneath her sheaves of slain.

		Triumphant o'er them all,
		See crowns and sceptres fall
		Before the arms of iron-soldered legions;
		As Capitolian Rome
		Across the salt sea foam
		Orders her Cæsars to remotest regions:
		From silver Spain and Albion's clouded seas
		To the fair shrines and marble mines of Greece.

		Pallas unmatched in war,
		To her triumphal car
		Rome chains fallen despots and discrownèd queens
		With many a rampant beast,
		Birds from the gorgeous East,
		And wool-haired Nubians torn from tropic scenes;
		There huge barbarians from Druidic woods
		Tower ominous o'er the humming multitudes;

		For still untamed and free
		In loathed captivity,
		Their spirits bend not to the conqueror's yoke,
		Though for a Roman sight
		They must in mimic fight
		Give wounds in play and deal Death's mortal stroke,
		While round the arena rings the fierce applause
		Voluptuous, as their bubbling life-blood flows

		In streams of purple rain
		From hecatombs of slain
		Saluting Cæsar still with failing breath,
		But in their dying souls
		Undying hate, which rolls
		From land to land the avalanche of Death,
		That, gathering volume as it sweeps along,
		Pours down the Alps throng on unnumbered throng.

		From northern hills and plains
		Storm-lashed by driving rains,
		From moorland wastes and depths of desolate wood,
		From many an icebound shore,
		The human torrents pour,
		Horde following upon horde as flood on flood,
		Avengers of the slain they come, they come,
		And break in thunder on the walls of Rome.

		A trembling people waits
		As, surging through its gates,
		Break the fierce Goths with trumpet-blasts of doom;
		And many a glorious shrine
		Begins to flare and shine,
		And many a palace flames up through the gloom,
		Kindled like torches by relentless wrath
		To light the Spoiler on destruction's path.

		Yea, with Rome's ravished walls,
		The old world tottering falls
		And crumbles into ruin wide and vast;
		The Empire seems to rock
		As with an earthquake's shock,
		And vassal provinces look on aghast;
		As realms are split and nation rent from nation,
		The globe seems drifting to annihilation.


V

		"Peace on earth and good will unto Men!"
		Came the tidings borne o'er wide dominions;
		The glad tidings thrilled the world as when
		Spring comes fluttering on the west wind's pinions,
		When her voice is heard
		Warbling through each bird,
		And a new-born hope
		Throbs through all things infinite in scope.

		"Peace on earth and good will!" came the word
		Of the Son of Man, the Man of Sorrow —
		But the peace turned to a flaming sword,
		Turned to woe and wailing on the morrow
		When with gibes and scorns,
		Crowned with barren thorns,
		Gashed and crucified,
		On the Cross the tortured Jesus died.

		And the world, once full of flower-hung shrines,
		Now forsakes old altars for the new,
		Zeus grows faint and Venus' star declines
		As Jehovah glorifies the Jew,
		He whom – lit with awe —
		God-led Moses saw,
		Graving with firm hand
		In his people's heart his Lord's command.

		Holding Hells and Heavens in either hand
		Comes the priest and comes the wild-eyed prophet,
		Tells the people of some happier land,
		Terrifies them with a burning Tophet;
		Gives them creeds for bread
		And warm roof o'erhead,
		Gives for life's delight
		Passports to the kingdom, spirit-bright.

		And the people groaning everywhere
		Hearken gladly to the wondrous story,
		How beyond this life of toil and care
		They shall lead a life of endless glory:
		Where beyond the dim
		Earth-mists Seraphim,
		Love-illumined, wait —
		Hierarchies of angels at heaven's gate.

		Let them suffer while they live below,
		Bear in silence weariness and pain;
		For the heavier is their earthly woe,
		Verily the heavenlier is their gain
		In the mansions where
		Sorrow and despair,
		Yea, all moan shall cease
		With the moan of immemorial seas.

		And to save their threatened souls from sin,
		Save them from the world, the flesh, the devil,
		Men and Women break from bonds of kin
		And in cloistered cell draw bar on evil,
		Worship on their knees
		Sacred Images,
		And all Saints above,
		The Madonna, mystic Rose of love.

		Mystic Rose of Maiden Motherhood,
		Moon of Hearts immaculately mild,
		Beaming o'er the turbulent times and rude
		With the promise of her blessèd Child:
		Whom pale Monks adore,
		Pining evermore
		For the heaven of love
		Which their homesick lives are dying of.

		But the flame of mystical desires
		Turns to fury fiercer than a leopard's,
		Holy fagots blaze with kindling fires
		As the priests, the people's careful shepherds,
		In Heaven's awful name,
		Set the pile on flame
		Where, for Conscience' sake,
		Heretics burn chaunting at the stake.

		Subterranean secrets of the prison,
		Throbs of anguish in the crushing cell,
		Torture-chambers of the Inquisition
		Are the Church's antidotes to Hell.
		Better rack them here,
		Mutilate and sear,
		Than their souls should go
		To the place of everlasting woe.

		And a lurid universal night,
		Lit by quenchless fires for unquenched sages,
		Thick with spectral broods that shun the light,
		Looms impervious o'er the stifled ages
		Where the blameless wise
		Fall a sacrifice,
		Fall as fell of old
		The unspotted firstlings of the fold.

		And the violent feud of clashing creeds
		Shatters empires and breaks realms asunder;
		Cities tremble, sceptres shake like reeds
		At the swift bolts of the Papal thunder;
		Yea, the bravest quail,
		Cast from out the pale
		Of all Christendom
		By the dread anathemas of Rome.

		And like one misled by marish gleams
		When he hears the shrill cock's note of warning,
		Europe, starting from its trance of dreams,
		Sees the first streak of the clear-eyed morning
		As it broadening stands
		Over ravaged lands
		Where mad nations are
		Locked in grip of fratricidal war.

		Castles burn upon the vine-clad knolls,
		Huts glow smouldering in the trampled meadows;
		And a hecatomb of martyred souls
		Fills a queenly town with wail of widows
		In those branded hours
		When red-guttering showers
		Splash by courts and stews
		To the Bells of Saint Bartholomew's.

		Seed that's sown upon the wanton wind
		Shall be harvested in whirlwind rages,
		For revenge and hate bring forth their kind,
		And black crime must ever be the wages
		Of a nation's crime
		Time transmits to time,
		Till the score of years
		Is wiped out in floods of staunchless tears.

		Yea, the anguish in a people's life
		May have eaten out its heart of pity,
		Bred in scenes of scarlet sin and strife,
		Heartless splendours of a haughty city;
		Dark with lowering fate,
		At the massive gate
		Of its kings it may
		Stand and knock with tragic hand one day.

		For the living tomb gives up its dead,
		Bastilles yawn, and chains are rent asunder,
		Little children now and hoary head,
		Man and maiden, meet in joy and wonder;
		Throng on radiant throng,
		Brave and blithe and strong,
		Gay with pine and palm,
		Fill fair France with freedom's thunder-psalm.

		Free and equal – rid of king and priest —
		The rapt nation bids each neighbour nation
		To partake the sacramental feast
		And communion of the Federation:
		And electrified
		Masses, far and wide,
		Thrill to hope and start
		Vibrating as with one common heart.

		From the perfumed South of amorous France
		With her wreath of orange bloom and myrtle,
		From old wizard woods of lost Romance
		Soft with wail of wind and voice of turtle,
		From the roaring sea
		Of grey Normandy,
		And the rich champaigns
		Where the vine gads o'er Burgundian plains;

		From the banks of the blue arrowy Rhone,
		And from many a Western promontory,
		From volcanic crags of cloven stone
		Crowned with castles ivy-green in story;
		From gay Gascon coasts
		March fraternal hosts,
		Equal hosts and free,
		Pilgrims to the shrine of liberty.

		But king calls on king in wild alarms,
		Troops march threatening through the vales and passes,
		Barefoot Faubourgs at the cry to arms
		On the frontier hurl their desperate masses:
		The deep tocsin's boom
		Fills the streets with gloom,
		And with iron hand
		The red Terror guillotines the land.

		For the Furies of the sanguine past
		Chase fair Freedom, struggling torn and baffled,
		Till infuriate – turned to bay at last —
		Rolled promiscuous on the common scaffold,
		Vengeful she shall smite
		A Queen's head bleached white,
		And a courtesan's
		Whose light hands once held the reins of France.

		She shall smite and spare not – yea, her own,
		Her fair sons so pure from all pollution,
		With their guiltless life-blood must atone
		To the goddess of the Revolution;
		Dying with a song
		On their lips, her young
		Ardent children end,
		Meeting death even as one meets a friend.

		And her daughter, in heroic shame,
		Turned to Freedom's Moloch statue, crying:
		"Liberty, what crimes done in thy name!"
		Spake, and with her Freedom's self seemed dying
		As she bleeding lay
		'Neath Napoleon's sway:
		Europe heard her knell
		When on Waterloo the Empire fell.


VI

		Woe, woe to Man and all his hapless brood!
		No rest for him, no peace is to be found;
		He may have tamed wild beasts and made the ground
		Yield corn and wine and every kind of food;
		He may have turned the ocean to his steed,
		Tutored the lightning's elemental speed
		To flash his thought from Ætna to Atlantic;
		He may have weighed the stars and spanned the stream,
		And trained the fiery force of panting steam
		To whirl him o'er vast steppes, and heights gigantic:
		But the storm-lashed world of feeling —
		Love, the fount of tears unsealing,
		Choruses of passion pealing —
		Lust, ambition, hatred, awe,
		Clashing loudly with the law,
		But the phantasms of the mind
		Who shall master, yea, who bind!

		What help is there without, what hope within
		Of rescue from the immemorial strife?
		What will redeem him from the spasm of life,
		With all its devious ways of shame and sin?




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