Page:Marlborough and other poems, Sorley, 1919.djvu/98

 Take but our pauper's gift of birth,

O let us from the grindstone free!

And tread the maddening gladdening earth

In strength close-braced with purity.

The earth is old; we ever new.

Our eyes should see no other sense

Than this, eternally to —

Our joy, our task, our recompense;

Up unexplored mountains move,

Track tireless through great wastes afar,

Nor slumber in the arms of love,

Nor tremble on the brink of war;

Make Beauty and make Rest give place,

Mock Prudence loud—and she is gone,

Smite Satisfaction on the face

And tread the ghost of Ease upon.

Light-lipped and singing press we hard

Over old earth which now is worn,

Triumphant, buffeted and scarred,

By billows howled at, tempest-torn,

Toward blue horizons far away

(Which do not give the rest we need,

But some long strife, more than this play,

Some task that will be stern indeed)—

We ever new, we ever young,

We happy creatures of a day!

What will the gods say, seeing us strung

As nobly and as taut as they? 80