Forgotten Harvests

Darkness and silence of the Northland,
Too long have you held the secrets of our Fair-haired fathers
Hidden like mysterious mountains in the twilight of autumn.
But through the rune-shaped windows of old books
And the black mouths of ancient sagas
You are seen and heard again.
Poppies smoulder in your springtime snowbanks,
Ethereal green stripes your midge-haunted reindeer pastures,
I see you reaping desperately in the short Greenland summer,
Hear the bells of your cattle driven home at sunny midnight,

Names of the Northern Heroes

Listen to the names of the heroes
Who stepped from island to island,
Pausing awhile under the outstretched smoke of Mr. Hekla
To build halls, to bathe in the hot springs,
Thence leaping into the snow drifts,
Begetting, murdering, bringing landslides
Upon the farms of their enemies,
Worshipping Christ or Thor, indifferent,
Ship-chested men, massive child-bearing women,
Singers of songs of conquest, love, and discovery,
Hating for generations,
Holders of parliaments upon volcanic islands.

Lyric Interlude of Hunters

Sliding from a lit world high in silver rainlands,
Glides a mournful river down a heather valley,
Making secret music to the reeking heights.
Dew is on the bracken, drenching web-hung spiders.
Mist will fall and coldly on the face turned upward
To behold that valley climbing into mountains
Terraced by the cloud-racks streaming from the barrows,
Shimmering with sun-bolts haloed on the hills.

Hark! The voice of the river is broken!

Standing in the swift ford, titanic in the mist-light,

Stir of the Vikings

Ohoy! From Scandinavian fjords
Dragon ships dart forth to trouble the northern hemisphere.
The horn of Roland astonishes the literal eagles of Roncesvalles.
Droning a new litany deprecating the Northmen,
Priests stand in arched doorways not yet become pointed.
Golden-haired princesses in solid-wheeled carts
Drawn by chalk-white oxen jolt from hall to hall.
Stag horns whiten on the beam ends.
Paris shouts from the walls of its island as Vikings row by.
The White Horse gallops upon the turf of Kent.

Occidental

Westward the unsuspected continent sprawls heavily across the face of the planet,
Changing the colors of its forest robe by seasons,
Flashing the white jewels of its lake-necklace.
Sliding forever from the sunset
The grey-green surface of the Earth-star
Hurtles its giant arch from west to east:
Serpent mounds unroll their " S " scars along the Ohio,
The stag-branched artery of rivers drains unhampered to the gulf,
Smoke of grass fires drifts across the prairies,
Red-men follow clouds of buffalo with stone-tipped arrows,

Celts in the North

Harps flutter the lamps of Tara,
Chariots smoke along the plain of Conal,
Saint Brandan sails west of Lyonesse,
Tintagel beholds Iseult weep,
In May young Launcelot finds Guinevere.
Coracles of saints creep northward,
Churches stretch their arms across the landscape,
The grail comes to Glastonbury,
And Arthur hides himself in Avalons of song.
With bells and vellum books and croziers,
Hermits take refuge in Iceland.
There in the lava caverns
Loud with the grinding voice of ocean,

Asia Major and Minor

To and fro, to and fro, drift the wheeled houses
Of the city-haters upon the northern tundras.
Prayer wheels whir in the dark gorges of Thibet.
Leaning low upon the necks of their horses,
Men with pagoda-shaped hats
Gallop through shoals of whistling arrows
Along the hill-tossed ribbon of the Chinese wall.
Only where the sun glitters upon the domes of the Bosphorus
And upon the red roofs of monasteries,
Islanded-minds contemplate the paradox
Of infinity in the womb of a woman,
Weaving a thin web of unity

Roman

Now to the faint clink of swords
And wolfish snarling of the twisted tubas
Rome throws out white veins of roads to bleed the world.
Over the castled wall in Britain
Pea-sized rocks are tossed to crush
The ant-men in the furze.
Eagles over S. P. Q. R. change to crosses over I. H. S.
Then, as the city-heart withdraws its blood,
Towns flare into the midnight sky,
The flames of villas taste the stars,
Moonlight floods the empty cups of amphitheatres;
Hun fire glitters in the Parthenon;

Carthaginian

Who has heard the crack of Carthaginian whips
Upon the backs of frozen elephants,
The roar of war-horns in the Maritime Alps,
The snake-drums of Numidian cavalry?
Who has seen the Punic triremes walk the sea
Like water-spiders, to the yell of slaves? —
Or lamp-hung oxen charge the Apennines?
In vain, Great City by the sea!
Shot from the Roman catapult,
The head of Hasdrubal whizzes into the lap of Hannibal.
" Carthago ... Delenda est Carthago! ... "
In vain the shrieks of babes in Moloch fires,

Minoan into Greek

Spin, Planet, spin! Bellows of the minotaur
Die away beneath the flames of daedal palaces.
Lions quiver beneath the arrows of Sargon.
Croesus beholds his image on a disc.
White marble spots the grey-green hills of Greece.
Charmed by the music of the Asian grasshopper,
Soothed by the wash of lights upon the sea-near hills,
Greeks become friendly with the Earth,
And forgetting fear,
Under the long shadows of the peristyles,
Speak of the beautiful importance of themselves.