Battle-Retrospect, and Other Poems/Battle-Retrospect
BATTLE-RETROSPECT.
Those sultry nights we used to pass outdoors
And through the cherry orchards to the fields
That stretched down to the floor of the Champagne,
And there that steady thunder in the west
That nightly rolled and echoed without rest
Broke on our ears with new intensity.
As those who come out suddenly upon
The sea, whose murmur reached them in the woods,
Are stunned by the loud-crashing surf that runs
In surging thunder all along the coast,
So the great breakers of this sea of sound
Broke over us when we had reached the fields,
And through the starry silences was borne
That fluctuating roar, its rise and fall
And climaxes that filled the soul with dread.
We saw the febrile flashes, hour by hour,
Incessant, over many miles of front,
Succeeding each the other instantly
As though in some fantastical pursuit,
In ever madder race. They shot their light
To the last stars; the empyrean throbbed
With man's device,—or were they men, or gods?
We saw the soaring signals flare and float,
Likewise incessant, multitudinous,
As though some city of the Vulcans lay
Across the land with flaming forges bright,
And panting furnaces that scorched the night,
Hammering out the ribs of a new earth
Or some new instrument of destiny.
A perturbation deeper far than fear
Took hold on us,
Never did man behold or hear
A thing more ominous;
So regular, so fierce, fatality
Was in its voice; no power on earth
Could halt that tempest for the briefest space,
Nor cool that mighty furnace, nor reach down
To guard the myriad souls within its blast.
Gazing upon that scene, it seemed there boiled
Red lava from the ground, some mouth of hell
Gaping, and smoking horror to the skies;
Or that some molten tide of death swept down
Beating relentlessly against the fields,
The summer fields that would not be submerged.
And I have seen, or thought I saw, the gods
(Mayhap the saints and devils of our faith)
Gather like planing eagles in the dusk
Above the battle and direct its course,
Clashing in mid-air, sweeping in great troops
To new reliefs and warring in the sky,
Whose immanence translated the dark hour
And sublimized the drama till it seemed
A war of genii and a spectre strife,
Enveloped in an Æschylean shade.
·····
The dead are gone and we are left alive
And those incredible and awful days
Are now no more. Nay, e'en their memory
Grows faded, and the fates that gave us them
Seem jealous that we should retain so much
As of forbidden knowledge. For no doubt
In those days there moved giants on the earth,
And it were better that these secrets lie
Unhinted at to those who never knew
Lest they find faith too easy. It were bad
Were a dull generation born for trade
To know that genii showed themselves those months
Often, scaling horizons, bent on tasks
Out of proportion to these times of peace,
And that great prodigies of ministrants
In aural loveliness would brood at night,
Extraordinary comforters, come down
To cope with like extraordinary pain.
But faith and all its then ambassadors
Have passed to some far corner of the skies
And left earth to its winter of desires,
Its ebb of passions and its leafless trees.
·····
When will that great age recommence
And all heaven's hosts in serried flights
Circle again in sudden immanence
About the earth and fill its days and nights
With lights and glooms and atmosphere intense?
When will that great age recommence
And many heroes come to birth?
When will men have again that sense
Of great things purposed on our earth
And issues toward of great significance?
When will that greater age return
And heaven draw near to earth again,
And thoughts of cosmic moment burn
Across our skies, and it grow plain
That mighty projects call to battle stern?
How are we fallen from our high estate
Who saw the dawn at Soissons that July
Rise upon pandemonium; heard, elate,
The trampling of the steeds of destiny,
And saw the flashes at the wheels of fate!
How are we fallen on another day
Whose life was a perpetual sacrament,
Supping with gods, and kneeling down to pray
In cataclysm when the world was rent,
As we strode shouting where the lightnings play!
O Marshal of the myriad souls of men,
O Marshal of the squadrons of the stars,
Lead us out to Thy battles once again,
To marches and to sufferings and scars,
Beyond the seas, beyond the sunset-bars,
Out where the air is pure and dreams remain.
O Soldier, Friend of soldiers, understand!
Call us out from the peril of our sloth,
The cheapening of our faiths. Once more, command!
And we shall rise again, repugnant, wroth
From these dark ways, to march o'er sea and land
Again to hear the trumpets of the slain,
Again to see the flares float o'er the steep,
To see the angel legions swarm again
And on before our glorying columns sweep
Down lists that lead beyond earth's sodden plain.