Page:Battle-retrospect, and other poems - Wilder - 1923.djvu/66

 Without a glance turned on the aghast abyss

Of thought, nor ever hearkening

To the appalling roaring of the waters

Risen in flood beneath the piers of day.

The ruth and pity of a million years

Spoke in my heart. I knew the voice was God

Articulate in the handiwork of man

Refined by time, whereby the Duomo globe,

The Giotto apparition, and the spears

Of thought that rose around me, seemed to rise

Out of the heart's core of humanity

Anonymously speaking from the dead,

Creative in its travail and divine

And bearing witness to its ground in God.

The myriads groping through the restricted course

Of their swift days, and each one baited on

Each in his place by life's sufficient lures

To lift the load of days and in hot blood

To meet the knives of life insensible

Through passion, found about these stones

That lie to-day in ruins, those same faiths

And loyalties which won their hearts to toil,

To strife, and so to life. Unconsciously

Building according to their thirst for life

They gave to God Himself a voice in clay

Which still speaks to us though the builders sleep.

No less the eternal spirit lures us on

Through baits commensurate with our little souls,

Objects but little nobler than the fees

And guerdons of the battle-games of old,

Yet 'round which that within the heart of man

Which is divine casts glamour not of earth,

To self-creation in the toils of action

And to the praise of God in self-abandon.

From our unconscious deed when we are gone

And others like us for a thousand years, 60