Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/223

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For out of the first lattice are the red lands that break,

And out of the second lattice, sea like a green snake,

But out of the third lattice, under low eaves like wings

Is a new corner of the sky and the other side of things.

It opened in the inmost place an instant beyond uttering,

A casement and a chasm and a thunder of doors undone,

A seraph's strong wing shaken out the shock of its unshuttering

That split the shattered sunlight from a light behind the sun.

"Then he drew sword and drave her where the judges sat and said:

'Cæsar sits above the Gods, Barbara the maid,

Cæsar hath made a treaty with the moon and with the sun,

All the gods that men can praise, praise him every one.

There is peace with the anointed of the scarlet oils of Bel,

With the Fish God, where the whirlpool is a winding stair to hell,

With the pathless pyramids of slime, where the mitred negro lifts

To his black cherub in the cloud abominable gifts,

With the leprous silver cities where the dumb priests dance and nod,

But not with the three windows and the last name of God.

They are firing, we are falling, and the red skies rend and shiver us

Barbara, Barbara, we may not loose a breath—

Be at the bursting doors of doom, and in the dark deliver us,

Who loosen the last window on the sun of sudden death.