Page:Flower of youth, poems in war time, Tynan, 1915.djvu/14

12 THE CALL

I hear an Army!

of men coming up from the edge of the world,

The ring of unnumbered feet ever louder and louder

Comes on and on like a mighty untameable tide,

Steady, implacable, out of the North and the South,

Out of the East and the West, they answer the call

Of her who stands, her eyes towards God and the stars,

Liberty, daughter of God, calling her men.

What manner of men are these? Like the desert sands

Uncounted, many as locusts, darkening the sky?

White men, black men, men of the tawny gold,

Golden-eyed like the lion, sons of the sun,

Men from the snow, their eyes like frost or a sword;

They have but one heart, one desire, they run one way.

Hurrying, hurrying to the shrill trumpet call.

Men from the ice-floes, men from the jungles come;

This from the arms of his bride, that from his dead.