Page:John Brown's body by Stephen Vincent Benét.djvu/17

 And should that task seem fruitless in the eyes Of those a different magic sets apart To see through the ice-crystal of the wise No nation but the nation that is Art,

Their words are just. But when the birchbark-call Is shaken with the sound that hunters make The moose comes plunging through the forest-wall Although the rifle waits beside the lake.

Art has no nations—but the mortal sky Lingers like gold in immortality.

This flesh was seeded from no foreign grain But Pennsylvania and Kentucky wheat, And it has soaked in California rain And five years tempered in New England sleet

To strive at last, against an alien proof And by the changes of an alien moon, To build again that blue, American roof Over a half-forgotten battle-tune

And call unsurely, from a haunted ground, Armies of shadows and the shadow-sound.

In your Long House there is an attic-place Full of dead epics and machines that rust, And there, occasionally, with casual face, You come awhile to stir the sleepy dust;

Neither in pride nor mercy, but in vast Indifference at so many gifts unsought, The yellowed satins, smelling of the past, And all the loot the lucky pirates brought.

I only bring a cup of silver air, Yet, in your casualness, receive it there.