RUSSIA: AN ODE 1890 I Out of hell a word comes hissing, dark as doom, seas Ears have heard not, tongues have told not things like these. Dante, led by love's and hate's accordant spell Saw not, where the filth was foulest, and the night Set beside this truth, his deadliest vision seems Pale and pure and painless as a virgin's dreams. Maidens dead beneath the clasping lash, and wives Rent with deadlier pangs than death-for shame survives, Naked, mad, starved, scourged, spurned, frozen, fallen, deflowered, Souls and bodies as by fangs of beasts devoured, Sounds that hell would hear not, sights no thought could shape, Limbs that feel as flame the ravenous grasp of rape, Filth of raging crime and shame that crime enjoys, Age made one with youth in torture, girls with boys, These, and worse if aught be worse than these things are, Prove thee regent, Russia-praise thy mercy, Czar. II Sons of man, men born of women, may we dare Save by light of hope and fire of burning thought. What though sun be less than storm where these aspire, Dawn than lightning, song than thunder, light than fire ? Help is none in heaven: hope sees no gentler star : Earth is hell, and hell bows down before the Czar. All its monstrous, murderous, lecherous births acclaim Shudders, quails, and sinks-or, filled with fierier breath, Rises red in arms devised of darkling death. Pity mad with passion, anguish mad with shame, Love grows hate for love's sake; life takes death for guide. Night hath none but one red star-Tyrannicide. III "God or man, be swift; hope sickens with delay : Smite, and send him howling down his father's way! Fall, O fire of heaven, and smite as fire from hell Halls wherein men's torturers, crowned and cowering, dwell! These that crouch and shrink and shudder, girt with power These that reign, and dare not trust one trembling hour These omnipotent, whom terror curbs and drives— These whose life reflects in fear their victims' livesThese whose breath sheds poison worse than plague's thick breath These whose reign is ruin, these whose word is death, These whose will turns heaven to hell, and day to night, These, if God's hand smite not, how shall man's not smite?" So from hearts by horror withered as by fire Surge the strains of unappeasable desire ; Sounds that bid the darkness lighten, lit for death; Bid the lips whose breath was doom yield up their breath; Down the way of Czars, awhile in vain deferred, How for shame shall men rebuke them? how may we Could not meet them armed in sunlit battle's light. Dark as fear and red as hate though morning rise, Life it is that conquers; death it is that dies. VOL. VI. BB FOR GREECE AND CRETE STORM and shame and fraud and darkness fill the nations full with night : Hope and fear whose eyes yearn eastward have but fire and sword in sight: One alone, whose name is one with glory, sees and seeks the light. Hellas, mother of the spirit, sole supreme in war and peace, Land of light, whose word remembered bids all fear and sorrow cease, Lives again, while freedom lightens eastward yet for sons of Greece. Greece, where only men whose manhood was as godhead ever trod, Bears the blind world witness yet of light wherewith her feet are shod: Freedom, armed of Greece was always very man and very God. |