Classic Poem

Come out of exile, come, come: the harvest-fields grow gaunt.
The over-lord, he has gone his way.
Lordlier spoil is his to-day.
Beasts of burden and beasts of prey,
Why will you suffer want?

Free of the seas, go free, great-finned: though the sea be filled with nets.
Free of the air; — for the watcher there, after strange prey, forgets.

Choose your path as you will, lord ox; for women follow the plough.
Take your fill, gray wolf, of the flocks. There are no shepherds now.

They have made them gods out of iron and blood; and they plough a smouldering path.
Blind and blinded, they follow now, the eyeless gods of wrath.

And the shepherding Man who held His heart for a light in His own two hands,
Houseless as you, an outcast too, — bleeding and spent He stands;

Bleeding afresh from open wounds, under the sky, alone;
To warn all souls that yet pass by, of the portion that Love shall own.

For the Hunter, bond to his bitter path, goaded and yoked, he plods
Under a scourge of knotted lies, — after the iron gods.