NIGHT-SENTRIES

Ever as sinks the day on sea or land,

Called or uncalled, you take your kindred posts.

At helm and lever, wheel and switch, you stand,

On the world’s wastes and melancholy coasts.

Strength to the patient hand!

To all, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

Now roars the wrenching train along the dark;

How many watchers guard the barren way

In signal-towers, at stammering keys, to mark

The word the whispering horizons say!

To all that see and hark—

To all, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

On ruthless streets, on byways sad with sin—

Half-hated by the blinded ones you guard—

Guard well, lest crime unheeded enter in!

The dark is cruel and the vigil hard,

The hours of guilt begin.

To all, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

Now storms the pulsing hull adown the sea:

Gaze onward, anxious eyes, to mist or star!

Where foams the heaving highway blank and free?

Where wait the reef, the berg, the cape, the bar?

Whatever menace be,

To all, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

Now the surf-rumble rides the midnight wind,

And grave patrols are on ocean edge.

Now soars the rocket where the billows grind,

Discerned too late, on sunken shoal or ledge.

To all that seek and find,

To all, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

On lonely headlands gleam the lamps that warn,

Star-steady, or ablink like dragon-eyes.

Govern your rays, or wake the giant horn

Within the fog that welds the sea and skies!

Far distant runs the morn:

To all, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

Now glow the lesser lamps in rooms of pain,

Where nurse and doctor watch the joyless breath,

Drawn in a sigh, and sighing lost again.

Who waits without the threshold, Life or Death?

Reckon you loss or gain?

To all, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

Honor to you that guard our welfare now!

To you that constant in the past have stood!

To all by whom the future shall avow

Unconquerable fortitude and good!

Upon the sleepless brow

Of each, alert and faithful in the night,

May there be Light!

Harper’s George Sterling

THE SWORDLESS CHRIST
Vicisti, Galilee

Aye, down the years, behold, he rides,

The lowly Christ, upon an ass;

But conquering? Ten shall heed the call,

A thousand idly watch him pass:

They watch him pass, or lightly hold

In mock lip-loyalty his name:

A thousand—were they his to lead!

But meek, without a sword, he came.

A myriad horsemen swept the field

With Attila, the whirlwind Hun:

A myriad cannon spake for him,

The silent, dread Napoleon.

For these had ready spoil to give.

Had reeking spoil for savage hands;

Slaves, and fair wives, and pillage rare:

The wealth of cities: teeming lands.

And if the world, once drunk with blood,

Sated, has turned from arms to peace,

Man hath not lost his ancient lusts;

The weapons change; war doth not cease.

The mother in the stifling den,

The brain-dulled child beside the loom,

The hordes that swarm and toil and starve,

We laugh, and tread them to their doom.

They shriek, and cry their prayers to Christ;

And lift wan faces, hands that bleed:

In vain they pray, for what is Christ?

A leader—without men to lead.

Ah, piteous Christ, afar he rides:

We see him, but the face is dim.

We, that would leap at crash of drums,

Are slow to rise and follow him.

The Forum Percy Adams Hutchison