Does his old vision watch that alien hill,
Embrowned and bleak, where strain upon the height,
Amid sharp silences that burn and chill,
Those heroes' sons, set in sterner fight
Than primeval war with solitude?
Lo now, the sullen cliff outjets in smoke.
And life is groaning death, blooded and broke!
So fell ye, brothers of the Lion-brood.
3
I weep the dead; they are no more, no more!
Oh, with what pain and rapture came to me
Full birth of love for dazzling-sanded shore,
For heaven of sapphire, and for scented tree!
Keen-eyed and all desire I feel my mood
Still fruitless, waiting gust of quickening breath—
And lo, on darkened wing the wind of death
Summoned austere the soul to nationhood.
4
Where cornfields smile in golden-fruited peace
There stalk the spirits of heroes firmly-thewed
As he that sailed their path to win the Fleece
For gods that still enchant our solitude.
I weep the dead; they are no more, no more!
Their sons that gather in the teeming grain
Walk sadlier than the men of hill and plain,
Themselves are harvest to the wrath of war.
5
I weep the dead; they are no more, no more!
When dusk descends on city and on plain,
Dim lights will shine from window and from door,
And some will guard the vigil of dull pain,
Yet, in the city or in solitude,
There is a burden in the starry air,
An oversong that cries, "The life is fair
That made its triumph nobler with its blood."
6