Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/To the Continental Socialists
TO THE CONTINENTAL SOCIALISTS
FEBRUARY 1906
We who have but begun,
We who as yet are few,
Send out our hearts to you
Whose cause and ours is one,
Who long have dauntless stood
And witnessed with your blood
The Holy Brotherhood
Of all beneath the sun.
Almost we were as these
With eyes but seeing not,
Well fed or ill, who rot
In poverty or ease;
Till on our ears swift-smiting
There came for our souls’ lighting
A rumour of men fighting
Across the narrow seas.
As far fleets we did mark
Your columns in the battle,
And your clamour, as the rattle
Of cannon through the dark,
From out your dim coasts welling,
Came faint but ever swelling,
And, as a breath compelling,
Revived the faded spark.
Yea, faith was in the mire
And hope had shrunk and sickened
Till you within us quickened
The Dream and the Desire;
The whisper of your name in us
Blew as a wind of shame in us
Until the dwindled flame in us
Burst in a mighty fire.
And by its blaze we knew
The road ’twas ours to follow,
And over hill and hollow
We set us to pursue
That road with toil and fasting,
Our thoughts for comfort casting
Out to the everlasting,
Illimitable blue.
Still as we go we win us
New comrades by the way
To share by night and day
What doom the Fates may spin us;
Each one the old path spurneth
And never one returneth,
And brighter, brighter, burneth
The fervour that is in us.
O glow of things sublime!
O glory of the vision!
May anger or derision
Weigh on our souls, who climb?
May furious fool or sneerer
Retard our steps when nearer
And clearer, ever clearer,
We view the Coming Time?
The heavens overarching
With the echo shall be ringing
Of those who travel singing
To the goal of all their searching:
The solid earth thereunder
Shall thrill with joy and wonder
Beneath the steady thunder
Of many nations marching.
Immeasurably vast
We see the multitude
Who stand where none have stood
And tread the plains at last
(Error and Darkness riven),
Of that terrestrial heaven
For which the race has striven
Through all the ages past;
The land foreseen of old,
Where naught is reaped unsown
And human blood and bone
Are neither bought nor sold;
An earth where kings’ oppressions
And prayers and intercessions
To priest-contrived obsessions
Shall be a strange tale told.
Where, upright ’mid the spheres,
Great Man, of Man the friend,
Shall rise and make an end
Of idle hopes and fears;
Where, truth and duty plainer,
Man shall be freer, saner,
And, of himself sustainer,
Shall wipe away all tears.
We who have but begun,
We who as yet are few,
Send out our hearts to you
Whose cause and ours is one,
Who long have dauntless prest
Onward toward the quest.
O Brothers, noblest, best
Of all beneath the sun.