“In measures strong we’ve heard your song,
And the warm blood mounts again;
And we scorn the beat of the stifled street
And strike for the open main.
“Far back—far back—we leave the plains
To the little hurrying hosts,
And over the seas in the scud-wet breeze
We lift for the Land o’ Ghosts.
“For the Land o’ Ghosts and the laughing coasts
And the goal we hope to win—
Though ne’er we reach the beckoning beach,
Ye have let us look within.
. . . . . . . . . .
“Though ne’er we reach the beckoning beach—
Though it fades ere we leap to land,
Ye have made us rife with the strength of life—
Ye have spoke ... and we understand.”
FATHER TIME
When your doctors fail to render—
When your lotions fail to heal—
When the salted scar is burning—
When aturtle turns the keel:
When the lights are lost to leeward—
When the last least hope is gone—
Then I call ye—Oh my children—
As a Mother calls her spawn.
By no magic may I do it—
By no sudden quick surcease:
Slow, so slow, ye cannot know it
Do I bring ye your release.
As the blackened heavens soften
To the morning’s growing gray,
And the gray spreads gold and crimson
Till in splendor breaks the day:
So by little and by little,
That ye may not know or see,
Do I soothe the salted searing—
Do I bid the shadows flee—
Do I weld the torn heart-cord
No surgeon art may heal,
Till ye lift the fastened latchet
And go forth in laughing weal.
From Eastward and from Westward
I call my broken clan;
We may not meet in lane or street
Or greet us man and man:
But slowly spread my wide-leagued wings—
And falling tenderly,
I wrap my troubled Earth-spawn
Unto the heart of me.