COURAGE THE DREAMERS
(For Anthony Bertram)
We swing our swords against the bare
Bleak brows of granite. Yea, we dare.
We of clay limbs, armed with frail rhyme,
To taunt the passive globes that stare
From the eye-sockets of stern Time.
Though our long anguish may not dint
His towering flanks, yet from this flint
Our swords strike such fierce sparks of light,
The moon is blanched, the fool stars stint
Their weak flames at the crest of night.
Yea though we bleed from crown to heel,
Yea though the points of our split steel
Make futile glories and then die
Against Time's blear immensity,
Yet for black woe there shall be weal!
Stauncher than Time our dream is built.
Despair not, human dreamers, for
We shall prevail after much war.
Yea, the poor stump of our sword's hilt
At length shall be Time's conqueror!
A number of these poems are reprinted from Voices, Coterie, the Nation, the English Review, the Englishwoman, To-day, Colour, the Apple, the New Witness, the Sphere, the Saturday Westminster, and other journals; and from "A Queen's College Miscellany," "The Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany," and Messrs. Palmer and Hayward's "Miscellany of Poetry."
THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD. LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.