An Ode in Time of Hesitation

VII

O bitter, bitter shade!

Wilt thou not put the scorn

And instant tragic question from thine eye?

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 drainèd 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.