Edwin Markham

The twilight is the morning of his day. While Sleep drops seaward from the fading shore, With purpling sail and dip of silver oar, He cheers the shadowed time with roundelay, Until the dark east softens into gray. Now as the noisy hours are coming—hark! His song dies gently—it is growing dark— His night, with its one star, is on the way! Faintly the light breaks over the blowing oats— Sleep, little brother, sleep: I am astir. We worship Song, and servants are of her— I in the bright hours, thou in shadow-time: Lead thou the starlit night with merry notes, And I will lead the clamoring day with rhyme.

We are circling, glad of the battle: we joy in the smell of the smoke. Fight on in the hell of the trenches: we publish your names with a croak! Ye will lie in dim heaps when the sunset blows cold on the reddening sand; Yet fight, for the dead will have wages—a death-clutch of dust in the hand. Ye have given us banquet, O kings, and still do we clamor for more: Vast, vast is our hunger, as vast as the sea-hunger gnawing the shore. ’Tis well ye are swift with your signals— the blaze of the banners, the blare Of the bugles, the boom of battalions, the cannon-breath hot on the air. It is for our hunger ye hurry, it is for our feast ye are met: Be sure we will never forget you, O servants that never forget! For we are the Spirits of Battle, the peerage of greed we defend: Our lineage rose from the Night, and we go without fellow or friend. We were ere our servant Sesostris spread over the Asian lands The smoke of the blood of the peoples, and scattered their bones to the sands. We circled in revel for ages above the Assyrian stream, While Babylon builded her beauty, and faded to dust and to dream. We scattered our laughter on nations— and Troy was a word and a waste, The glory of Carthage was ruined, the grandeur of Rome was effaced! And we blazoned the name of Timour, as he harried his herd of kings, And the host of his hordes wound on, a dragon with undulant rings. And we slid down the wind upon France, when the steps of the earthquake passed, When the Bastile bloomed into flame, and the heavens went by on the blast. We hung over Austerlitz, cheering the armies with jubilant cries: We scented three kings at the carnage, and croaked our applause from the skies. O kings, ye have catered to vultures— have chosen to feed us, forsooth, The joy of the world and her glory, the hope of the world and her youth. O kings, ye are diligent lackeys: we laurel your names with our praise, For ye are the staff of our comfort, for ye are the strength of our days. Then spur on the host in the trenches to give up the sky at a stroke: We tell all the winds of their glory: we publish their fame with a croak!

The builder who first bridged Niagara’s gorge, Before he swung his cable, shore to shore, Sent out across the gulf his venturing kite Bearing a slender cord for unseen hands To grasp upon the further cliff and draw A greater cord, and then a greater yet; Till at the last across the chasm swung The cable then the mighty bridge in air! So we may send our little timid thought Across the void, out to God’s reaching hands— Send out our love and faith to thread the deep— Thought after thought until the little cord Has greatened to a chain no chance can break, And we are anchored to the Infinite!