Chapter I: The War

Deer-like the East pants terror-struck! The West,
A flame ablaze that leaps amid the skies!
Nations are wolves! and Hatreds are afoot,
Whetting their bayonets!

With force gigantic, lo, the bursting forth
Of the barbarian sweeps on, age-wrought;
Oceans are cleft and swallow Gorgon-ships,
Castles of might afloat!

What sorcerers, in Earth's deep bosom buried,
Beat into shape the metal? For what kings
Slave they? What crowns forge they? The tower-ships,
The ports, the oceans quake!

Lovingly the dream born of dream flies high
Air wandering amid the eagles; yet
O victory! Lord of the azure, man
Spreads horror even there.

Methinks the Niebelungen of the Night
Startle sun's radiance ... And ye, the Rhine's
Water-born Nymphs, are lashed and swept away
By monstrous hurricanes.

Siegfried, the hero of the golden hair,
Makes men and elements before him kneel.
War is the arbiter of rising worlds;
And Violence, arbitress.

Franks, Anglo-Saxons, Alemanni, Hungars!
Europe, a viper! And the armies, dragons!
Here, Uhlans are destroyers pitiless;
And there, the Cossacks' bands!

From endless sweeps of steppes, the Slav blows forth
An endless squall, the havoc's ruthless vow!
Liberty is the phantom; and the slave,
The stern reality.

Helvetians, Scandinavians, Latins, Russians,
The martyr Pole, heroic Flanders' land,
All, small and great, forward to battle rush
With one man's violence!

Beating thy breast, thou clingest to thy throne,
Storm-wrapped, O worshipper of gods that fade,
Hypatia thou, the Frenchman's ruling queen,
Blood-bred Democracy!

The Vosgic towers tremble! And God's wrath,
Valkyrie, the awful Nymph, wind-ridden sweeps,
A rider pitiless that threatens thee,
O Paris noble-born!

Our age's honored prophet, Tamerlan!
A shadow's dream, Messiah of sweet Peace!
Enthroned in judgment stands America.
While from far Asia's depths,

The Indian hermits and gold-gatherers
With yellow Mongols are afoot! With them,
The sons of Oceania, Kerman,
And Africa; Semites,

War-glad Turanians and Aryans,
Lands that the Adriatic kisses, Rumans,
Our brother Serb, a wall!--Let Austria's
Cataract burst and roar!

Vosges and Carpathians and Balkans quake!
Ridges and mountains tremble! The oceans roar!
Five Continents' passionate wraths and hatreds
Revel in festival!

But lo, the Briton with sea-battling sceptre
That binds the restless waves to his command--
What Caesars' fetters forges he anew
Upon the island rock?

And there the Turk, who holds thee with dog's teeth
And makes of thee a valley of sad tears,
O paradisial land of old Ionia;
And here, our Mother Greece,

Dream-weaver of unending laurel-wreaths
Beside her Cretan helmsman and her king!
Wax-pale, the world stands listening and holds
Its breath, benumbed with fright!