An Ode in Time of Hesitation

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 pendant 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, wilful, 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.