Page:Battle-retrospect, and other poems - Wilder - 1923.djvu/15

 And that great prodigies of ministrants

In aural loveliness would brood at night,

Extraordinary comforters, come down

To cope with like extraordinary pain.

But faith and all its then ambassadors

Have passed to some far corner of the skies

And left earth to its winter of desires,

Its ebb of passions and its leafless trees.

When will that great age recommence

And all heaven's hosts in serried flights

Circle again in sudden immanence

About the earth and fill its days and nights

With lights and glooms and atmosphere intense?

When will that great age recommence

And many heroes come to birth?

When will men have again that sense

Of great things purposed on our earth

And issues toward of great significance?

When will that greater age return

And heaven draw near to earth again,

And thoughts of cosmic moment burn

Across our skies, and it grow plain

That mighty projects call to battle stern?

How are we fallen from our high estate

Who saw the dawn at Soissons that July

Rise upon pandemonium; heard, elate,

The trampling of the steeds of destiny,

And saw the flashes at the wheels of fate!

How are we fallen on another day

Whose life was a perpetual sacrament,

Supping with gods, and kneeling down to pray

In cataclysm when the world was rent,

As we strode shouting where the lightnings play!

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