II.
First Voices.
SAW ye the stars last night, all still,
Remote, and bitter-cold,
Who were too passionless to thrill,
Being so wise and old?
Second Voices.
O SAW ye not one star alight,
A leap of silver fire,
Did ye not see it sear the night
And die of its own desire?
First Voices.
AW ye the ancient stars look on
Locked in a chilly dream
Which banished the awakened one
Beyond their frozen scheme?
Second Voices.
O SAW ye not the ashen band
Fade in the morning-gold,
Who long had ceased to understand,
Being so bitter-old?
All the Voices.
YE petrified on heavenly thrones,
Was there not chaos once?
Ye did not keep your ordered zones
When ye were raging suns!
Once flaming rivers were your breath
And the wild hairs of your brow—
Once ye were life, once ye were death!
Ye are not either now.
PEACE.
I.
AM as awful as my brother War,
I am the sudden silence after clamour.
I am the face that shows the seamy scar
When blood has lost its frenzy and its glamour.
Men in my pause shall know the cost at last
That is not to be paid in triumphs or tears,
Men will begin to judge the thing that’s past
As men will judge it in a hundred years.
Nations! whose ravenous engines must be fed
Endlessly with the father and the son,
My naked light upon your darkness, dread!—
By which ye shall behold what ye have done:
Whereon, more like a vulture than a dove,
Ye set my seal in hatred, not in love.