Page:Battle-retrospect, and other poems - Wilder - 1923.djvu/29

 Eternal Vindicator, grant, O grant

Thy love remain not unto these a lie!

So at their coming move the nether realm

That from beyond the grave

The vast disorder

And far commotion in the unseen order

Shall overwhelm

Even death's dim sea-walls of adamant

(Whose ramparts looming since the primæval Act

Immure our days from Life's assaulting ocean tracts

And blot the stars from those wide-ranging cataracts)

And raise a wave

Shall roll back on the hearts of those that live

And rouse reverberations on the oceans of the day

And wake responding passions in the living far away.

Give, O give

To these whose futile cry

Found no reply,

Starving beneath a mocking sky,

To speak in trumpet tones by those who live,

Deep answering deep, and soul to distant soul,

As gong wakes gong, and when long echoes roll

From ocean, far abandoned belfries toll.

There is no ebb in nature without answering flow.

When summer's tide of green

Retreats to depths unseen

And earth is bare beneath the usurping snow,

None doubt that from its unplumbed levels deep

The tides of spring will creep

To submerge the world again in emerald seas.

So shall life's flood retire from its estuaries.

The satellites that from the unseen preside

Over the flux and reflux of the spirit's tide

May now withdraw

Its floods to depths beyond our curious awe,

Then by majestic and unfailing law 23