Classic Poem

I

I S this the front — this level sweep of life,
This pageant without pulse of haste or fear?
Can this calm exercise be mortal strife?
Is the last reach of passion measured here?
We looked for angry blade and poisonous breath
Striking the floor of judgment, flail and fan;
Here lurked, we thought, crude agonies of death —
But here, in one wide dignity, is man.
Others behind the conflict, safe and far,
Still wage with lips their travesty of war;
We catch the rumor when the cannon cease.
Here at the front, when most the cannon rage,
The dream-touched actors on this mighty stage
In silence play their parts, and seem at peace.

II

Framed in with battle, this weird pantomime,
This dignity of action, conjures up
Shades of old heroes — Lancelot in his prime,
Galahad, questing for the holy cup,
Beautiful Hector marching to his fate,
Tristram and Palimedes, rivals twain,
And Roland sounding his proud horn too late —
These quiet actors play these parts again.
And in the lull the critics far away,
Who have not seen, nor ever read, this play,
Who cannot act, who never trod the stage —
Their quarrel mingles with the threatening cry
Of the scene-shifters watching Roland die,
Who seize the moment for a better wage.

III

If this world be a stage, what hours we give
To tedious make-up in the tiring-room;
How simply comes at last our cue to live,
How, ere we know it, we enact our doom!
The wisdom that impels us to the play
Is patient with us while we choose our parts,
But without warning sounds our judgment day;
The curtain rises — life, the drama, starts.
How late it starts! Ere this grim curtain rose,
How long we practised attitude and pose,
Disguise of accent, costume, mood or mind!
Yet in this inventory of our art,
Living at last, we play our naked heart;
How brief a reckoning counts us with our kind.

IV

If character be fate, no need to ask
Who set the stage, who cast you for the r├┤le;
Put on what man you are, put off the mask,
Put on the tragic pattern of your soul.
At last be true; no gesture now let spring
But from supreme sincerity of art;
Let him who plays the monarch be a king,
Who plays the rogue, be perfect in his part.
So when this hour had rung, the scene began.
One played the rash, one played the patient man,
And one, the hero, drew the dragon's fangs;
One heard death's bugler calling and obeyed,
And one, a rose-cheeked boy, the martyr played;
One played the traitor well — see where he hangs.

V

We yet may play more r├┤les than we believed,
Since to himself at last each man is known,
Since now the actor studies undeceived
The part he learned, and lived, and has outgrown.
And those, the few and flawless, the sublime
Whose poignance of perfection strikes us dumb —
Even for themselves, in the surprise of time,
Doubt not another reckoning will come.
" Comrades, we shall rehearse more wisely — yea,
There shall be nobler persons in our play,
We shall rebuild the plot on kindlier laws. "
So at the front they act, and see, and ponder,
And win, with simple gratitude and wonder,
Peace in themselves, which is their sole applause.