Classic Poem

An earthen shadow lay on men's endeavor
Four years of war, nine years of bitter peace
Had bred a cynic wisdom in the young
The old men fed
Upon the old thought: “Even the best are dead
“Soon and forever
“Daily our power shrinks. Evils increase.”
Some laughed, some cursed, some cried, but most were quiet,
Having drunk weak poisons till no potion stung.

Meanwhile the plunging hillocks of the sea
Skipped no less wildly because men were dull
The mountains did not crane their craggy necks
To watch the cities climbing to their full
Desperate stature.
The wind was not still,
Ploughing the boughs for a harvest of rich sound,
Though no ear gathered it.

The stars were bound
On journeys that ignore the human will.
And clouds contended, and the soft rain fell,
And each neglected day that ended
Shed petals from the flowering immense
With a remote lavish indifference.

But that vast ocean, neither salt nor green,
That coastless sea where no ship voyages,
The nameless waters that the spirit knows,
Trembled like flesh under the lover's touch,
Trembled, unseen,
And shrank, and mightily rose
Those cliffs, eternal and invisible,
That the soul pants for in the dread of death
As the sick stare at the health-giving hills,
Lifted their throats to the vehement proud breath
Of an announcing wind …
And music, thin as crystal snows,
Rang in that country where no man has been,
But where the pilgrim mind finds its profound repose.

Above the loud gray leagues of threatening sea,
Below the unfathomed ruthlessness of heaven,
But blind to both, having once turned the key
On light, on sound,
On every comradely
Solicitation of the day and night,
One flew, alone.
Locked in the narrow dark,
Seeing only the hands that passed across
This dial and that, to mark
Miles won, and power's loss,
As a physician feeling his own pulse
Might judge how soon no medicine would serve,—
He kept control
Of his dear monster: the enormous plane,
And of that singular passenger: his soul.
He was alone with it.
The cockpit held
Nothing but night, the roar of the machine,
The dials that said:
“So much is gone …
“There's storm ahead …
“So much is gone …
“There's storm behind …
“So much is gone …”

He was alone
As one condemned to die, whom neither friend
Nor stranger can commend
To the ambiguous Grace that chose to sow
Divine desires in man,—then lay him low
In solitude, in darkness, and aware
Of a brute fury mastering the air
To its inane malignant ends,
He, in the air,
Pursued his course, prey to what agony
He need not say, nor on what victory's
Tremendous trail
He flew, as toward a light
None the less luminous because it burned
Beyond the airy road his hooded eyes discerned.
He did not fail …

Not his far flight,
Not the dared feat and the accomplished goal,
Not the acclaiming thunders, nor the bright
And rapid rain of honors split the night
In which our coward courage, like a mole,
Crept stupidly, until he gave it eyes.
The miracle was wrought aloft, alone.
There in the upper reaches of the air,
With none to hear but his half-deafened soul,
Sounded the viking cry:
“Skoal, Lindbergh, skoal!”
The storm snarled vainly, and in vain the sea
Coiled back upon itself remorselessly
Because one man was brave
At midnight, in mid-ocean, in mid-air,
The grave
Resigned its victory,
And death was robbed of its undying sting.
Here is the thing
That in the stress of mortal life stands firm,
Setting the lion's valor in the worm,
Pouring upon this jungle world a splendor
Larger than sunset fires, and more tender,
Showing to the mean heart and cruel mind
Provinces undiscovered, rich beyond imagination,
Not to be defined.

Humbly, as he,
And with the same smiling austerity,
Let us too fly
Through the known danger and the perils chanced,
Guessing what salty roadsteads, what grim sky
Regard our struggle So we shall have danced
Our dance with fate, the Masqued One,
And have trodden
The windy spaces that the eagles tread.
“Even the best are dead
Soon” … But forever
Remembered virtue shines, and does not die.