The Desire of Nations
Nor will He come like carnal kings of old, pomp of pilfered gold;
Nor like the Pharisees with pride of prayer;
Nor as the stumbling foolish stewards dream
In tedious argument and milkless creed,
But in the passion of the heart-warm deed
Will come the Man Supreme.
Yea, for He comes to lift the Public Care —
To build on Earth the Vision hung in air.
This is the one fulfilment of His Law
The one Fact in the mockeries that seem.
This is the Vision that the prophets saw -
The Comrade Kingdom builded in their dream.
No, not as in that elder day
Comes now the King upon the human way.
He comes with power: His white unfearing face
Shines through the Social Passion of the race.
He comes to frame the freedom of the Law,
To touch these men of Earth
With a feeling of life's oneness and its worth,
A feeling of its mystery and awe.
And when He comes into the world gone wrong, He will rebuild her beauty with a song.
The Desire of Nations
To every heart He will its own dream be:
One moon has many phantoms in the sea.
Out of the North the norns will cry to men:
"Balder the Beautiful has come again!'
The flutes of Greece will whisper from the dead :
Apollo has unveiled his sunbright head!”
The stones of Thebes and Memphis will find voice: "Osiris comes: O tribes of Time, rejoice!"
And social architects who build the State,
Serving the Dream at citadel and gate,
Will hail Him coming through the labor-hum.
And glad quick cries will go from man to man:
Lo, He has come, our Christ the Artisan
The King who loved the lilies, He has come!"
He will arrive, our Counselor and Chief.
And with bleak faces lighted up will come
The earth-worn mothers from their martyrdom,
To tell Him of their grief.
And glad girls caroling from field and town
Will go to meet Him with the labor-crown,
The new crown woven of the heading wheat.
And men will sit down at His sacred feet;
And He will say - the King
"Come, let us live the poetry we sing!"
The Desire of Nations
And these, His burning words, will break the ban-
Words that will grow to be,
He comes to make the long injustice right
Comes to push back the shadow of the night,
The gray Tradition full of flint and flaw
Comes to wipe out the insults to the soul,
The insults of the Few against the Whole,
The insults they make righteous with a law.
Yea, He will bear the Safety of the State,
For in his still and rhythmic steps will be
The power and music of Alcyone,
Who holds the swift heavens in their starry fate.
Yea, He will lay on souls the power of peace,
And send on kingdoms torn the sense of Home —
More than the fire of Joy that burned on Greece,
More than the light of Law that rose on Rome.
I am a child of the reef and the blowing spray,
And all my heart goes wildly to the sea.
I am a changeling: can you follow me Through hill and hollow on the wind's dim way? Yes, at the break of a tempestuous day
They bore me to the land through starless storm
And laid me in the pillow sweetly warm And broken by the first one's little stay.
The elf kings found me on an ocean reef,
A lyric child of mystery and grief.
Then need I tell you why the trembling start Why in my song the sound of ocean dwells — Why the quick gladness when the billow swells, As though remembered voices called the heart?
When I behold how men and women grind
And grovel for some place of pomp or power,
To shine and circle through a crumbling hour,
Forgetting the large mansions of the mind,
That are the rest and shelter of mankind;
And when I see them come with wearied brains
Pallid and powerless to enjoy their gains,
I seem to hear a goblin laugh unwind.
And then a memory sends upon its billow
Thoughts of a singer wise enough to play,
Who took life as a lightsome holiday :
Oft have I seen him make his arm a pillow,
Drink from his hand, and with a pipe of willow
Blow a wild music down a woodland way.
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