An Ode In Time Of Hesitation

(After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted negro regiment, the 54th Massachusetts.)

I

Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made

To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe,

And set here in the city's talk and trade

To the good memory of Robert Shaw,

This bright March morn I stand,

And hear the distant spring come up the land;

Knowing that what I hear is not unheard

Of this boy soldier and his negro band,

For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead,

For all the fatal rhythm of their tread.

The land they died to save from death and shame

Trembles and waits, hearing the spring's great name,

And by her pangs these resolute ghosts are stirred.

II

Through street and mall the tides of people go

Heedless; the trees upon the Common show

No hint of green; but to my listening heart

The still earth doth impart

Assurance of her jubilant emprise,

And it is clear to my long-searching eyes

That love at last has might upon the skies.

The ice is runneled on the little pond;

A telltale patter drips from off the trees;

The air is touched with southland spiceries,

As if but yesterday it tossed the frond

Of pendent mosses where the live-oaks grow

Beyond Virginia and the Carolines,

Or had its will among the fruits and vines

Of aromatic isles asleep beyond

Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

III

Soon shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee,

Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse;

Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose

Go honking northward over Tennessee;

West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie,

And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung,

And yonder where, gigantic, willful, young,

Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates,

With restless violent hands and casual tongue

Moulding her mighty fates,

The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen;

And like a larger sea, the vital green

Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung

Over Dakota and the prairie states.

By desert people immemorial

On Arizonan mesas shall be done

Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun;

Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrifice

More splendid, when the white Sierras call

Unto the Rockies straightway to arise

And dance before the unveiled ark of the year,

Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms,

Unrolling rivers clear

For flutter of broad phylacteries;

While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas

That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep

To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep,

And Mariposa through the purple calms

Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms

Where East and West are met,--

A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set

To say that East and West are twain,

With different loss and gain:

The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet.

IV

Alas! what sounds are these that come

Sullenly over the Pacific seas,--

Sounds of ignoble battle, striking dumb

The season's half-awakened ecstasies?

Must I be humble, then,

Now when my heart hath need of pride?

Wild love falls on me from these sculptured men;

By loving much the land for which they died

I would be justified.

My spirit was away on pinions wide

To soothe in praise of her its passionate mood

And ease it of its ache of gratitude.

Too sorely heavy is the debt they lay

On me and the companions of my day.

I would remember now

My country's goodliness, make sweet her name.

Alas! what shade art thou

Of sorrow or of blame

Liftest the lyric leafage from her brow,

And pointest a slow finger at her shame?

V

Lies! lies! It cannot be! The wars we wage

Are noble, and our battles still are won

By justice for us, ere we lift the gage,

We have not sold our loftiest heritage.

The proud republic hath not stooped to cheat

And scramble in the market-place of war;

Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star.

Here is her witness: this, her perfect son,

This delicate and proud New England soul

Who leads despis'd men, with just-unshackled feet,

Up the large ways where death and glory meet,

To show all peoples that our shame is done,

That once more we are clean and spirit-whole.

VI

Crouched in the sea fog on the moaning sand

All night he lay, speaking some simple word

From hour to hour to the slow minds that heard,

Holding each poor life gently in his hand

And breathing on the base rejected clay

Till each dark face shone mystical and grand

Against the breaking day;

And lo, the shard the potter cast away

Was grown a fiery chalice crystal-fine

Fulfilled of the divine

Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring-finger stirred.

Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed

Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light,

Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed,

Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed,--

They swept, and died like freemen on the height,

Like freemen, and like men of noble breed;

And when the battle fell away at night

By hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust

Obscurely in a common grave with him

The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust.

Now limb doth mingle with dissolv'd limb

In nature's busy old democracy

To flush the mountain laurel when she blows

Sweet by the southern sea,

And heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose:--

The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew

This mountain fortress for no earthly hold

Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old

Of spiritual wrong,

Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong,

Expugnable but by a nation's rue

And bowing down before that equal shrine

By all men held divine,

Whereof his band and he were the most holy sign.

VII

O bitter, bitter shade!

Wilt thou not put the scorn

And instant tragic question from thine eyes?

Do thy dark brows yet crave

That swift and angry stave--

Unmeet for this desirous morn--

That I have striven, striven to evade?

Gazing on him, must I not deem they err

Whose careless lips in street and shop aver

As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek

Flush from the bronze, and his dead throat to speak?

Surely some elder singer would arise,

Whose harp hath leave to threaten and to mourn

Above this people when they go astray.

Is Whitman, the strong spirit, overworn?

Has Whittier put his yearning wrath away?

I will not and I dare not yet believe!

Though furtively the sunlight seems to grieve,

And the spring-laden breeze

Out of the gladdening west is sinister

With sounds of nameless battle overseas;

Though when we turn and question in suspense

If these things be indeed after these ways,

And what things are to follow after these,

Our fluent men of place and consequence

Fumble and fill their mouths with hollow phrase,

Or for the end-all of deep arguments

Intone their dull commercial liturgies--

I dare not yet believe! My ears are shut!

I will not hear the thin satiric praise

And muffled laughter of our enemies,

Bidding us never sheathe our valiant sword

Till we have changed our birthright for a gourd

Of wild pulse stolen from a barbarian's hut;

Showing how wise it is to cast away

The symbols of our spiritual sway,

That so our hands with better ease

May wield the driver's whip and grasp the jailer's keys.

VIII

Was it for this our fathers kept the law?

This crown shall crown their struggle and their ruth?

Are we the eagle nation Milton saw

Mewing its mighty youth,

Soon to possess the mountain winds of truth,

And be a swift familiar of the sun

Where aye before God's face his trumpets run?

Or have we but the talons and the maw,

And for the abject likeness of our heart

Shall some less lordly bird be set apart?--

Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat?

Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with the bat?

IX

Ah no!

We have not fallen so.

We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know!

'T was only yesterday sick Cuba's cry

Came up the tropic wind, "Now help us, for we die!"

Then Alabama heard,

And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho

Shouted a burning word.

Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred,

And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth,

East, west, and south, and north,

Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young

Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan,

By the unforgotten names of eager boys

Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung

With the old mystic joys

And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on,

But that the heart of youth is generous,--

We charge you, ye who lead us,

Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain!

Turn not their new-world victories to gain!

One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays

Of their dear praise,

One jot of their pure conquest put to hire,

The implacable republic will require;

With clamor, in the glare and gaze of noon,

Or subtly, coming as a thief at night,

But surely, very surely, slow or soon

That insult deep we deeply will requite.

Tempt not our weakness, our cupidity!

For save we let the island men go free,

Those baffled and dislaureled ghosts

Will curse us from the lamentable coasts

Where walk the frustrate dead.

The cup of trembling shall be drain'd quite,

Eaten the sour bread of astonishment,

With ashes of the hearth shall be made white

Our hair, and wailing shall be in the tent;

Then on your guiltier head

Shall our intolerable self-disdain

Wreak suddenly its anger and its pain;

For manifest in that disastrous light

We shall discern the right

And do it, tardily.--O ye who lead,

Take heed!

Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will smite.

1900.