Classic Poem

One great plain and five great chieftains
Drawing nearer each to each,
Rearing fast, like broods of giants,
Sons to foster and to teach.

As a wolf-pack on the mountains
Suddenly its fellows scents,
So the five vast tribal musters
Sighted one another's tents.

Then the five chiefs pealed a summons
For each other's place and birth,
And the five roared back together:
“I am father of the earth!”

Then the outskirts swayed and jostled,
Questioned, quarrelled and defied,
Till one wild man, blind with passion,
Smote another, that he died.

And the red blood on the prairie
For a moment gleamed and curled,
Then in five great torrents o'er it
Met the first fight of the world.

And the screaming human oceans,
Black, white, yellow, red and brown,
Over continents and ages
Surged and struggled up and down.

First the white-skinned men came trampling,
Bold of heart and strong of hand,
Then the yellow race came swarming
From its yellow eastern land.

First the myriads out of Afric
Swept the fiery sons of Shem,
Then the star-led Semites, turning,
Took and did the same to them.

To and from the racial battle
Trampled o'er the primal earth,
Drove and crashed and smote and shouted
For the secret of their birth.

Now the Mongol scourged the Aryan
For a stranger, for a pest,
Now the Aryan stoned the Mongol
In his cities in the West.

Now the Semite spurned the Aryan
“Hold aloof: we are the Lord's.”
Now the Aryan held the Semite,
Beaten, branded, bound with cords.

Now the red man flayed the white man,
Scorched and scalped with knife and flame;
Now the white man shot the red man
Like a brainless head of game.

Now the white man held the black man
Toiling in a shameless law;
Now the black man took the white man,
Took him peppered: took him raw.

To and from the blinded struggled,
Shocked and staggered, reeled and swirled,
For the case was undecided,
Which was father of the world.

And the family enquiry
To this day is going on;
Once with rended trees and boulders,
Now with battery and gun.

Yet the vision was not ended,
For methought upon a land
'Neath a crested wall of mountains
Met the five kings, hand to hand.

And when morning reddened darkly
On the high and shelving heath,
Lay the five great rulers moaning,
Stricken nigh unto the death.

And above them, on the upland,
Did a tall, weird being show,
Limbs in red clay cast gigantic,
Hair and beard like blinding snow.

And his voice like the low thunder
Of an old forgotten flood:
“What is this that tears my substance,
What is this that sheds my blood?”

In the ten wild eyes upgazing,
Sprang a memory and a pain:
“Father Adam, Father Adam,
Hast thou shown thyself again?”

“We were blind and had forgotten,
See our banners are unfurled;
Father Adam, Father Adam,
Thou wert father of the world!”

Yet the vision was not ended,
Ere it fled, a gleam, a word,
Nations round the knees of Adam,
Hand in hand before the Lord.

Varied, tolerant, united,
Satisfying diverse needs;
Where the Mongol stained his vases,
And the Indian strung his beads.

Where the harmless Ethiopian
Ate and hunted, laughed and fought,
Where the rod of Europe governed
And the harp of Israel taught.