Battle-Retrospect, and Other Poems/Interlude
INTERLUDE.
Comrades, we bring this chapter to a close,
This long parenthesis of cosmic strife,
This interlude, touched with the grandiose,
Set in the uneventful tale of life.
For then this human swathe, this bandaging
That muffles us from the sublime was nigh
Threadbare with taking part in, witnessing
Too proximately God's grand strategy.
There we marched out on haunted battle-ground,
There smelled the strife of gods, were brushed against
By higher beings, and were wrapped around
With passions not of earth, all dimly sensed.
There saw we dæmons fighting in the sky
And battles in aerial mirage,
The feverish Véry lights proclaimed them by,
Their tramplings woke our panting, fierce barrage.
Their tide of battle, hither, thither driven,
Filled earth and sky with cataclysmic throes,
Our strife was but the mimicry of heaven's
And we the shadows of celestial foes.