POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE
With a shout of trumpets and roll of drums,
Down the road the music comes
And all my heart leaps up to greet
The steady tread of the marching feet.
Blare of bugle and shriek of fife...
This is the triumphing wine of life!
My senses reel and my glad heart sings,
My spirit soars on jubilant wings.
Fluttering banners and gonfalons
Cover with beauty the murderous guns;
'T is sweet to live, 't were great to die
With this vast music marching by.
For all my heart leaps up to greet
The steady tread of the marching feet
When down the road the music comes
With a shout of trumpets and roll of drums.
THE HIDDEN WEAVER
There where he sits in the cold, in the gloom,
Of his far-away place by his thundering loom,
He weaves on the shuttles of day and of night
The shades of our sorrow and shapes of delight.
He has wrought him a glimmering garment to fling
Over the sweet swift limbs of the Spring,
He has woven a fabric of wonder to be
For a blue and a billowy robe to the sea,
He has fashioned in sombre funereal dyes
A tissue of gold for the midnight skies.
But sudden the woof turns all to red.
Has he lost his craft? Has he snapped his thread?
Sudden the web all sanguine runs.
Does he hear the yell of the thirsting guns?
While the scarlet crimes and the crimson sins
Grow from the dizzying outs and ins
Of the shuttle that spins, does he see it and feel?
Or is he the slave of a tyrannous wheel?
Inscrutable faces, mysterious eyes,
Are watching him out of the drifting skies;
Exiles of chaos crowd through the gloom
Of the uttermost cold to that thundering room
And whisper and peer through the dusk to mark
What thing he is weaving there in the dark.
Will he leave the loom that he won from them
And rend his fabric from hem to hem?
Is he weaving with daring and skill sublime
A wonderful winding-sheet for time?