Chapter VII: Scenes From Afar

(_A Battlefield_)

Above the tottering ramparts of the day
Massed clouds dissolve their lines; reform, and break
Into a thousand fragments from the grey.
Scattered, they drift awhile, then come to rest
On some far shore like mariners marooned,
While down the burning avenue of the west
The sun drops, flaming, like an angry wound.

A raven rises from the eastern skies,
Mounts up the lifted causeways of the north,
Winging an arc of shadow as she flies;
And soon the broken fragments close again,
The straylings of her brood flock to her wings--
Whirlwind and cloud, the thunder and the rain,
And what is left of night's unuttered things.

Now closed is every seam of sky and land.
The air, the water and the sod are one,
And every gulf of light and darkness spanned.
O spirits that love the daylight and the sun,
That with unerring fingers trace,
When night's dark moments are outrun,
The swarthy features of the morning's face;
In whose involvéd weavings hour by hour
Are fashioned forth the hues of nature's dress,
In dew and rainbow, grass and tree and flower,
And all the patterns of earth's loveliness;
Whose iridescent splendors burn
In vein of leaf, in curl of fern.
And in the flame the summer throws
Upon the poppy and the rose!
Draw near with every voice that's heard
In sound of cataract and bird,
With every color that the spring
Sheds on a blossom, blade or wing:
Come with your potencies that stir
The sap of life in pine and fir
That high along the mountains climb;
Bring rosemary and thorn and thyme
And heather--all that dawn distils
Of fragrance from your clouded hills:
From heath and glade and marge of lake,
Draw near and watch the morning break!

Wherefore should a daisy bloom,
Or scent come from the thorn?
What sun could penetrate this gloom,
Make redolent this morn?
The lark is banished from the sky,
The thrush has fled the ground,
Not heaven's chorus could outvie
This bacchanal of sound
That from the throat of fire and flood
Would drown the voice of God,
Answering the challenge of the blood
That cries out from the clod.

Where are the lilies that your valleys yield,
Or those that in foul waters blow?
May not the primrose of the field
Bloom near the snow?
Should not the clover in the meadows bare,
The sweet-briar in the hedges there,
Burst red and grow?

They cannot bloom. Spring's gales have lost
Their power the earth to leaven,
For those dark vapors would exhaust
The lavender of heaven.