The Desire of Nations

Nor will He come like carnal kings of old,
With 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 fulfillment 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,

The Desire of Nations

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.
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.

The Desire of Nations

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 martyr-
dom,

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!"

And these, His burning words, will break

The Desire of Nations

He comes to make the long injustice rightComes to push back the shadow of the

night;

The gray Tradition full of flint and flawComes 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.

The Elf Child

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 dwellsWhy the quick gladness when the billow swells,

As though remembered voices called the

heart?