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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>An Ode in Time of Hesitation</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted negro regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>I </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made <br>To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe, <br>And set here in the city's talk and trade <br>To the good memory of Robert Shaw, <br>This bright March morn I stand, <br>And hear the distant spring come up the land; <br>Knowing that what I hear is not unheard <br>Of this boy soldier and his negro band, <br>For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead, <br>For all the fatal rhythm of their tread. <br>The land they died to save from death and shame <br>Trembles and waits, hearing the spring's great name, <br>And by her pangs these resolute ghosts are stirred. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>II </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Through street and mall the tides of people go <br>Heedless; the trees upon the Common show <br>No hint of green; but to my listening heart <br>The still earth doth impart <br>Assurance of her jubilant emprise, <br>And it is clear to my long-searching eyes <br>That love at last has might upon the skies. <br>The ice is runneled on the little pond; <br>A telltale patter drips from off the trees; <br>The air is touched with southland spiceries, <br>As if but yesterday it tossed the frond <br>Of pendant mosses where the live-oaks grow <br>Beyond Virginia and the Carolines, <br>Or had its will among the fruits and vines <br>Of aromatic isles asleep beyond <br>Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>III </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Soon shall the Cape Ann children shout in glee, <br>Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse; <br>Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose <br>Go honking northward over Tennessee; <br>West from Oswego to Sault Sainte-Marie, <br>And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung, <br>And yonder where, gigantic, wilful, young, <br>Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates, <br>With restless violent hands and casual tongue <br>Moulding her mighty fates, <br>The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen; <br>And like a larger sea, the vital green <br>Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung <br>Over Dakota and the prairie states. <br>By desert people immemorial <br>On Arizonan mesas shall be done <br>Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun; <br>Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrifice <br>More splendid, when the white Sierras call <br>Unto the Rockies straightway to arise <br>And dance before the unveiled ark of the year, <br>Sounding their windy cedars as for shawms, <br>Unrolling rivers clear <br>For flutter of broad phylacteries; <br>While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas <br>That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep <br>To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep, <br>And Mariposa through the purple calms <br>Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms <br>Where East and West are met, -- <br>A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set <br>To say that East and West are twain, <br>With different loss and gain: <br>The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>IV </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Alas! what sounds are these that come <br>Sullenly over the Pacific seas, -- <br>Sounds of ignoble battle, striking dumb <br>The season's half-awakened ecstasies? <br>Must I be humble, then, <br>Now when my heart hath need of pride? <br>Wild love falls on me from these sculptured men; <br>By loving much the land for which they died <br>I would be justified. <br>My spirit was away on pinions wide <br>To soothe in praise of her its passionate mood <br>And ease it of its ache of gratitude. <br>Too sorely heavy is the debt they lay <br>On me and the companions of my day. <br>I would remember now <br>My country's goodliness, make sweet her name. <br>Alas! what shade art thou <br>Of sorrow or of blame <br>Liftest the lyric leafage from her brow, <br>And pointest a slow finger at her shame? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>V </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Lies! lies! It cannot be! The wars we wage <br>Are noble, and our battles still are won <br>By justice for us, ere we lift the gage. <br>We have not sold our loftiest heritage. <br>The proud republic hath not stooped to cheat <br>And scramble in the market-place of war; <br>Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star. <br>Here is her witness: this, her perfect son, <br>This delicate and proud New England soul <br>Who leads despisèd men, with just-unshackled feet, <br>Up the large ways where death and glory meet, <br>To show all peoples that our shame is done, <br>That once more we are clean and spirit-whole. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>VI </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Crouched in the sea fog on the moaning sand <br>All night he lay, speaking some simple word <br>From hour to hour to the slow minds that heard, <br>Holding each poor life gently in his hand <br>And breathing on the base rejected clay <br>Till each dark face shone mystical and grand <br>Against the breaking day; <br>And lo, the shard the potter cast away <br>Was grown a fiery chalice crystal-fine <br>Fulfilled of the divine <br>Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring-finger stirred. <br>Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed <br>Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light, <br>Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed, <br>Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed, -- <br>They swept, and died like freemen on the height, <br>Like freemen, and like men of noble breed; <br>And when the battle fell away at night <br>By hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust <br>Obscurely in a common grave with him <br>The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust. <br>Now limb doth mingle with dissolvèd limb <br>In nature's busy old democracy <br>To flush the mountain laurel when she blows <br>Sweet by the southern sea, <br>And heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose: -- <br>The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew <br>This mountain fortress for no earthly hold <br>Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old <br>Of spiritual wrong, <br>Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong, <br>Expugnable but by a nation's rue <br>And bowing down before that equal shrine <br>By all men held divine, <br>Whereof his band and he were the most holy sign. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>VII </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">O bitter, bitter shade! <br>Wilt thou not put the scorn <br>And instant tragic question from thine eye? <br>Do thy dark brows yet crave <br>That swift and angry stave -- <br>Unmeet for this desirous morn -- <br>That I have striven, striven to evade? <br>Gazing on him, must I not deem they err <br>Whose careless lips in street and shop aver <br>As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek <br>Flush from the bronze, and his dead throat to speak? <br>Surely some elder singer would arise, <br>Whose harp hath leave to threaten and to mourn <br>Above this people when they go astray. <br>Is Whitman, the strong spirit, overworn? <br>Has Whittier put his yearning wrath away? <br>I will not and I dare not yet believe! <br>Though furtively the sunlight seems to grieve, <br>And the spring-laden breeze <br>Out of the gladdening west is sinister <br>With sounds of nameless battle overseas; <br>Though when we turn and question in suspense <br>If these things be indeed after these ways, <br>And what things are to follow after these, <br>Our fluent men of place and consequence <br>Fumble and fill their mouths with hollow phrase, <br>Or for the end-all of deep arguments <br>Intone their dull commercial liturgies -- <br>I dare not yet believe! My ears are shut! <br>I will not hear the thin satiric praise <br>And muffled laughter of our enemies, <br>Bidding us never sheathe our valiant sword <br>Till we have changed our birthright for a gourd <br>Of wild pulse stolen from a barbarian's hut; <br>Showing how wise it is to cast away <br>The symbols of our spiritual sway, <br>That so our hands with better ease <br>May wield the driver's whip and grasp the jailer's keys. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>VIII </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Was it for this our fathers kept the law? <br>This crown shall crown their struggle and their ruth? <br>Are we the eagle nation Milton saw <br>Mewing its mighty youth, <br>Soon to possess the mountain winds of truth, <br>And be a swift familiar of the sun <br>Where aye before God's face his trumpets run? <br>Or have we but the talons and the maw, <br>And for the abject likeness of our heart <br>Shall some less lordly bird be set apart? -- <br>Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat? <br>Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with the bat? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>IX </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=539747" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Ah no! <br>We have not fallen so. <br>We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know! <br>'T was only yesterday sick Cuba's cry <br>Came up the tropic wind, "Now help us, for we die!" <br>Then Alabama heard, <br>And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho <br>Shouted a burning word. <br>Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred, <br>And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth, <br>East, west, and south, and north, <br>Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young <br>Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan, <br>By the unforgotten names of eager boys <br>Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung <br>With the old mystic joys <br>And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on, <br>But that the heart of youth is generous, -- <br>We charge you, ye who lead us, <br>Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain! <br>Turn not their new-world victories to gain! <br>One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays <br>Of their dear praise, <br>One jot of their pure conquest put to hire, <br>The implacable republic will require; <br>With clamor, in the glare and gaze of noon, <br>Or subtly, coming as a thief at night, <br>But surely, very surely, slow or soon <br>That insult deep we deeply will requite. <br>Tempt not our weakness, our cupidity! <br>For save we let the island men go free, <br>Those baffled and dislaureled ghosts <br>Will curse us from the lamentable coasts <br>Where walk the frustrate dead. <br>The cup of trembling shall be drainèd quite, <br>Eaten the sour bread of astonishment, <br>With ashes of the hearth shall be made white <br>Our hair, and wailing shall be in the tent; <br>Then on your guiltier head <br>Shall our intolerable self-disdain <br>Wreak suddenly its anger and its pain; <br>For manifest in that disastrous light <br>We shall discern the right <br>And do it, tardily. -- O ye who lead, <br>Take heed! <br>Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will smite.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=William+Vaughn+Moody">William Vaughn Moody</a></strong></div>