Poems New and Old. John Freeman
Forgot aside all lesser wrongs, and rose
Against the spiritual evil of that threat
That made them of dishonour slaves or foes.
And who may but with pride remember how
Not by ten righteous justice might be saved,
But by unsaintly millions moving all
As the tide moves when myriad tossed waves flow
One way, and on the crumbling bastions fall;
Then sinking backwards unopposed and slow
Over the ruined towers where those vain angers raved.
VI
Creep tarnished gilded figures to their holes
Who once walked like great men upon the earth
Flickering their false shadows. Fear, like a hound,
Hunts them, and there's a death in every sound;
And had they souls sorrow would prick their souls
At every heavy sigh the wind waved forth.
… Into their holes they've crept, and they will die.
Of them no more and never any more.
Their leper-gilt is gone, and they will lie
Poisoning a little earth and nothing more.
VII
—That justice has been saved and wrong been slain,
That the slow fever-darkness ends in day,
Nor madness shakes the pillared world again
With the same blind proud fury; that in vain
Whispers the Tempter now, "So pass away
Strength, honesty and hope, and nothing left but pain!"
That the many-voiced confusion of the night
Clears in the winging of a spirit bright
With new-recovered joy;—for this, O Light,
Light Giver, Night Dispeller, praise should be.
But praise is dumb from burning hearts to Thee.
VIII
But as a forest bending in the wind
Murmurs in all its boughs after the wind,
Sounds uninterpreted and untaught airs;
So now when Thy wind over England stirs,
The proud and untranslating sounds of praise
Mingle tumultuous over our human ways;
And magnifying echoes of Thy wind
Rouse in the profoundest forests of the mind.
IX
And in the secret thicket where Thy light
Is dimmed with starry shining of the night,
Hearing these mingled airs from every wood
Thou'lt smile serenely down, murmuring, "'Tis good."
While Angels in the thicket borders curled
Amid the farthest gold beams of Thy hair,
Seeing on one drooped beam this distant world
Floating illumined, cry, "Bright Lord, how fair!"
OUT OF THE EAST
When man first walked upright and soberly
Reflecting as he paced to and fro,
And no more swinging from wide tree to tree,
Or sheltered by vast boles from sheltered foe,
Or crouched within some deep cave by the sea
Stared at the noisy waste of water's woe
Where the earth ended, and far lightning died
Splintered upon the rigid tideless tide;
When man above Time's cloud lifted his head
And speech knew, and the company of speech,
And from his alien presence wild beasts fled
And birds flew wary from his arrow's reach,
And cattle trampling the long meadow weed
Did sentry in the wind's path set; when each
Horn, hoof, claw, sting and sinew against man
Was turned, and the old enmity began;
When, following, beneath the hand of kings
Moved men their parting ways, and some passed on
To forest refuge, some by dark-browed springs,
And some to high remoter pastures won,
And some o'er yellow deserts spread their wings,
Thinning with time and thirst and so were gone
Forgotten; when between each wandered host
The seldom travellers faltered and were lost;—
In those old days, upon the soft dew'd sward
That held its green between the thicket's cloud,
Walked two men musing ere the wide moon poured
Her full-girthed weightless flood. And one was bowed
With years past knowledge, and his face was scored
Where light or deep had every long year ploughed—
Pain, labour, present peril, distant dread
Scored in his brow and bending his shagged head.
Palsy his frame shook as a harsh wind shakes
Complaining reeds fringing a frozen river;
His eye the aspect had of frozen lakes
Whereunder the foiled waters swirl and quiver;
His voice the deep note that the north wind takes
Drawn through bare beechwoods where forlorn birds shiver—
Deep and unfaltering. A younger man
Listened, while warmer currents in him ran.
"Was not my son even as myself to me,
As you to him showed his own life again?
Now he is dead, and all I looked to see
In him removes to you—less near and plain,
Confused with other blood; and what will be
I groping cannot tell, and grope in vain.
For men have turned to other ways than mine:
Yourself are less fulfilment than a sign,
"Sign of a changing world. And change I fear.
I have seen old and young like brief gnats die,
And have faced death by plague and flood and spear:
I have seen mine own familiar people lie
In generations reaped; and near and near
Age leads on Death—I hear his husky sigh.
Yet Death I fear not, but these clouds of change
Sweeping the old firm world with new and strange.
"Son of my son, to whom the world shines new,
You are strange to me for whom the world is old.