Classic Poem

Books on the tables — books along each wall —
Books in proud bindings — torn books in a heap —
Some books content with century-hallowed sleep,
And others that on quiet midnights call
Until they wake me from my dreams, and hale
Me shivering down to listen to their story,
While stars go by in unregarded glory,
And dawn comes up, cold and estranged and pale. . . .
O long-time friends! What other power than you
Can nourish our old passion? — hold us true
To the young faith which once our hearts avowed?
When in the solitude of the evening light
We keep your quiet vigil with the night,
You bring the sun. The day brings back a cloud.
Here where the lamplit room's book-guarded space
Is all the world, and not an alien breath
Enters to this small citadel, — this vast place
Where dead men's voices break the hush of death, —
Here through the night-hours I turn well-loved pages
That in my youth seemed eloquent of a plan
Divined by eager poets, confident sages,
Of the great destiny and high worth of man.
Still the tall spires of their heroic vision
Rise clear before me, as they did of old.
And yet a savage laughter of derision
Jangles now in my heart. The night grows cold.
Soon the first pallor will tremble in the sky —
And then, I know, these midnight dreams must die.

Like the recurrence of an old despair,
Dawn soon will turn the windows slowly grey.
Yesterday whirled our hopes like leaves in the air;
Now comes the chill wind of another day.
Yesterday whirled us in the tempest-boast
Of wars that saved a world for liberty:
Today dawns tragic, now that we have lost
Even our faith we had an enemy.
Today looks in through the blank window-pane
Upon the dreaming dupes that late we were,
And whispers — " What the world endured, was vain;
In vain the high hearts found their sepulcher
By a certain river, or in a certain wood.
I rise, a new day, flushed with future blood! "
Cruel and evil and aloof and cold
This dawn confronts us. For with secret breath
New war-lords like the ones we saw of old
Today, in council, still are whispering death.
Again they weave their intricacies of hate
Which, on some other dawn, inevitably
Shall be the arbiters of the young men's fate —
Shall be the swift tornado from the sky.
In every land is raised the old device
Of greed and terror, ignorance and hate.
That which we swore should never happen twice
Grows strong, — without our gate, within our gate.
And high-and-low and near-and-far conspire
To heap the rich fuel, and invoke the fire.