Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/153

 Rh

Red as the eye of anger the Sun set;

And giant Thunders round him black as jet,

Gazed down into those black Deeps they beset;

And under them and mirroring them, a scud

Of glassy mountains moved athwart the flood,

Laced by that last gleam with a foam of blood.

Then he who lived upon that desperate craft,

Crown'd and a King, stood forth and kinglike quaff'd

Red wine, and raised his voice aloud, and laugh'd:

"Roll on and rot for all thy corpses, Sea,

That with thy moonsuck'd surges wouldest be

Lord of the halcyon Earth, thine enemy—

With altercations of great waves and air,

And sobs and cries of anger, wouldest tear

Piecemeal her patient fields and all things there.

Ungovernable god, thee I defy,

Weak man. Canst thou for all thy rage reply?" . ..

Then from beneath there came the answer, Aye.

He heard, but deem'd his thought replied to thought

And cried again aloud (the red ray caught

His crown of gold with flaming rubies wrought):

"Improvident, furious, idle, hot to hate

Laborious Earth—her unlaborious mate,

Strong but in anger, in destruction great:

Her fields and floods, where flow'rs are grown and glass'd;

Thine, where thy mad waves run like things outcast,

And scarce the staggering petrel braves the blast,