Arms and the Man

The hour’s small questions, contests of a day,
And the loud storm that rolls in eyars away,
Are only combats in a boundless strife
Older than man and deeper than his life,
Where ours is not in triumph or despair,
But well to wield the weapons we may hear;—
‘Tis the old strife of Order and young Light
Invading Chaos and Primeval Night.—
Light ever young and Order ever new,
Whose sunrise banner waves for me and you
As for the martial Hierarchs who first bore
Creation’s mandate to the hollow shrine
Of the unpulsing Dark! and as the rings
Of undulant Fire rolled, widening, from their wings,
Round every true man grows a luminous sphere
With life potential throbbing far and near,
Whose pulses meet and mingle as they run,
As stars far sundered are by light made one.

Into the conflict each, as if alone,
Bears shield and weapon his whole being's own, 
Proof against arrowy fire, or suffering flaw 
By errant Folly tilting with a straw;
Etherial temper or of leaden edge,
As his own soul fulfills its nature's pledge.
Against the Anarch throned in human hearts
Words, barbed with truth, are keen as steely darts;
A laugh may reach him whom God's thunders misses
Or the round sweep of smooth antithesis
Carve off that head, the bitter lip, the while, 
Keeping unchanged its cold sardonic smile!
Wisdom and wit and learning, winged song, 
And eloquence that bears the soul along;
The artist's pencil and the poet's pen, 
And all the indignant thoughts of virtuous men, 
Are arms against the aggressor; and above 
All shafts vindictive is the breath of Love—
Love who redeems the Lost through willing loss, 
And bridges chaos with her own red cross!

But when the foe in stubborn Nature lurks,
With other arms the gallant Conqueror work,
He tames the royal horse, the enduring on, 
Whitens the glen with tributary flocks,
And from the dark foundations of the hills
Draws steel like wire, in fiery flashing rills,
To shape new shafts against the Protean foe,—
Won from his own dark armory below.
His gleaming axe descends on giant oaks,
And centuried glooms fly startled from his strokes;
His sturdy lough comes crashing through the clod
And billowy harvests o’er the prairie nod; 
Old famine mumbling at the bones of men
Flies the green tide and seeks her desert den.

His sounding hammer rings a victor peal,
The floods are harnessed to his grinding wheel,
The humming spindle and the throbbing loom
Sing as they weave the Anarch’s web of doom;
On odorous pine the swiftly-gliding plane
Chimes in the march of Order’s golden reign.
When earth surrenders what the earth can yield,
He ploughs the stormy ocean like a field;
His canvas, big by every wind that blows
Between the austral and the boreal snows,
Teeming with myriad gain, bears wealth and power,
And better than he knows brings in the destined hour,
Forces sublime that were his dread before
Become the servants of the Conqueror;
He marries warring elements that bring
To life ne powers to serve the earth’s new kind;
Water and fire their giant offspring lend—
An eyeless Samson, now to grind, now rend;
Like screaming eagles o’er the steel-ribbed vale
His engines swoop and chide the lagging gales:
He takes the lightening by its turning mane
And makes it wear his iron bridle rein,
Run on his errands through the air and deep,
Almost an omnipresence, with one leap
Clearing a continent, in a pulse’s play,
From midnight rushing to meridian day.

In every victory over want and care
Soul slips a fetter, mind is freer there;
And utter self can snatch no golden realm
From the Unknown but God sits at our helm;
Swords are his plowshares, and a glad increase
Grows from the field of war to bloom in peace.