And Mariposa through the purple calms
Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms
Where East and West are met,-

A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set
To say that East and West are twain,
With different loss and gain:

The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet.

IV

Alas! what sounds are these that come
Sullenly over the Pacific seas,-

Sounds of ignoble battle, striking dumb
The season's half-awakened ecstasies?
Must I be humble, then,

Now when my heart hath need of pride?

Wild love falls on me from these sculptured men;

By loving much the land for which they died

I would be justified.

My spirit was away on pinions wide

To soothe in praise of her its passionate mood

And ease it of its ache of gratitude.

Too sorely heavy is the debt they lay

On me and the companions of my day.

I would remember now

My country's goodliness, make sweet her name.
Alas! what shade art thou

Of sorrow or of blame

Liftest the lyric leafage from her brow,

And pointest a slow finger at her shame?

V

Lies! lies! It cannot be! The wars we wage

Are noble, and our battles still are won

By justice for us, ere we lift the gage.
We have not sold our loftiest heritage.
The proud republic hath not stooped to cheat
And scramble in the market-place of war;

Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star.

Here is her witness: this, her perfect son,

This delicate and proud New England soul
Who leads despised men, with just-unshackled feet,
Up the large ways where death and glory meet,
To show all peoples that our shame is done,
That once more we are clean and spirit-whole.

VI

Crouched in the sea fog on the moaning sand
All night he lay, speaking some simple word
From hour to hour to the slow minds that heard,
Holding each poor life gently in his hand
And breathing on the base rejected clay

Till each dark face shone mystical and grand
Against the breaking day;

And lo, the shard the potter cast away

Was grown a fiery chalice, crystal-fine,

Fulfilled of the divine

Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring-finger stirred.
Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed

Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light,
Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed,
Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed,—
They swept, and died like freemen on the height,
Like freemen, and like men of noble breed;
And when the battle fell away at night
By hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust
Obscurely in a common grave with him
The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust.
Now limb doth mingle with dissolvèd limb
In nature's busy old democracy

To flush the mountain laurel when she blows

Sweet by the southern sea,

And heart with crumpled heart climbs in the rose:—

The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew

This mountain fortress for no earthly hold

Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old

Of spiritual wrong,

Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong,

Expugnable but by a nation's rue

And bowing down before that equal shrine
By all men held divine,

Whereof his band and he were the most holy sign.

O bitter, bitter shade!

VII

Wilt thou not put the scorn

And instant tragic question from thine eyes?

Do thy dark brows yet crave

That swift and angry stave—

Unmeet for this desirous morn

That I have striven, striven to evade?
Gazing on him, must I not deem they err
Whose careless lips in street and shop aver
As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek
Flush from the bronze, and his dead throat to speak?

Surely some elder singer would arise,

Whose harp hath leave to threaten and to mourn

Above this people when they go astray.

Is Whitman, the strong spirit, overworn?

Has Whittier put his yearning wrath away?

I will not and I dare not yet believe!

Though furtively the sunlight seems to grieve,
And the spring-laden breeze

Out of the gladdening west is sinister
With sounds of nameless battle overseas;
Though when we turn and question in suspense
If these things be indeed after these ways,
And what things are to follow after these,
Our fluent men of place and consequence
Fumble and fill their mouths with hollow phrase,
Or for the end-all of deep arguments
Intone their dull commercial liturgies-
I dare not yet believe! My ears are shut!
I will not hear the thin satiric praise
And muffled laughter of our enemies,
Bidding us never sheathe our valiant sword
Till we have changed our birthright for a gourd
Of wild pulse stolen from a barbarian's hut;

1

Showing how wise it is to cast away
The symbols of our spiritual sway,
That so our hands with better ease

May wield the driver's whip and grasp the jailer's keys.

VIII

Was it for this our fathers kept the law?

This crown shall crown their struggle and their ruth? Are we the eagle nation Milton saw

Mewing its mighty youth,

Soon to possess the mountain winds of truth,

And be a swift familiar of the sun

Where aye before God's face His trumpets run?

Or have we but the talons and the maw,

And for the abject likeness of our heart

Shall some less lordly bird be set apart?

Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat? Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with the bat?

Ah no!

We have not fallen so.

IX

We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know! 'Twas only yesterday sick Cuba's cry

Came up the tropic wind, "Now help us, for we die!" Then Alabama heard,

And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho

Shouted a burning word.

Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred,

And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth,

East, west, and south, and north,

Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young

Shed on the awful hill slope of San Juan,

By the unforgotten names of eager boys

Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung
With the old mystic joys

And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on,
But that the heart of youth is generous,-

We charge you, ye who lead us,

Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain!

Turn not their new-world victories to gain!

One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays

Of their dear praise,

One jot of their pure conquest put to hire,
The implacable republic will require;
With clamor, in the glare and gaze of noon,
Or subtly, coming as a thief at night,
But surely, very surely, slow or soon
That insult deep we deeply will requite.
Tempt not our weakness, our cupidity!
For save we let the island men go free,
Those baffled and dislaureled ghosts
Will curse us from the lamentable coasts
Where walk the frustrate dead.

The cup of trembling shall be drainèd quite,
Eaten the sour bread of astonishment,

With ashes of the hearth shall be made white
Our hair, and wailing shall be in the tent;
Then on your guiltier head

Shall our intolerable self-disdain

Wreak suddenly its anger and its pain;

For manifest in the disastrous light

We shall discern the right

And do it, tardily.-O ye who lead,

Take heed!

Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will smite.

William Vaughn Moody [1869-1910]

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

UNTRAMMELLED Giant of the West,
With all of Nature's gifts endowed,
With all of Heaven's mercies blessed,
Nor of thy power unduly proud---
Peerless in courage, force, and skill,
And godlike in thy strength of will,-

Before thy feet the ways divide:

One path leads up to heights sublime;
Downward the other slopes, where bide
The refuse and the wrecks of Time.