Salutation: To Nicholas Ii. 1898

SALUTE the soul that dares, though royal born,
Become knight errant of the hope forlorn;
Disdain the sneer that curls the curving lip,
Arrest a world’s doubt by the sceptre tip.
As sure as crawling slug within the wood,
The lowest reading of the highest mood.
As surely as the skies the caverns crown,
The noble deed shall live the base thought down.
As certain as the dawn to stir the dark,
The arrow of the age flies to its mark.
Dividing years and years to be shall know
Whose was the hand that held and bent the bow.
Now, then, and ever well the great law wears :
All souls high-born salute the soul that dares.

Mighty the voices of powers
Pent in the prisoned world;
Mighty the forces of nations,
Peoples on peoples hurled.
Strong are the hands of the masters
Moulding the minds of men;
Gray is the wisdom of statecraft,
Old is the poisoned pen.

Mightier the cry of the human
Wakening from his sleep ;
Mightier the woe of the ages
Wailing up from the deep.
Stronger the ache of the yearning
Arms that were torn apart;
Wiser the science of loving,
Older the smitten heart.

Policy, thronecraft, and deathcraft,
Cursèd and choked with blood ;
Codes and traditions, delusions,
Evil intent for good, —
Great was your day. But there cometh
Greater than that, or this.
Lean on the strength of the State, where
Peace the archangel is.

Deep is the truth as mid-ether,
Fixed as the suns above;
Laurels of death bud no roses
Of joy and of gentle love.
Challenge the drum-throbs to tell it!
Bugles, oh, sing it wild !
Worth the world, dear are the kisses
Of wife and of clinging child.

Spirits of men who have yielded
Hopes of their youth and prime;
Scorning for flag and for country
Dreams and the deeds of time, —
An army invincible marcheth,
Moveth with soundless tramp,
Glittering, and serried, and awful,
Out of an unknown camp.

“ Where are the visions we died for ?
Gone with the gift of breath;
Dim as the standards we followed.
Grant us the rights of death !
Blood-bought the protest we enter ;
Crimson, our brief is unfurled.
Who hears the vanished complainants
Hushed in the courts of the world ?

“ Nay ! Add no more to our legions !
Piteous their number rolls.
Ghosts of the slaughtered quintillions,—
Countless the sum of our souls.
We, doomed by a brutal beast doctrine
Blind from its hated birth,
Arraign it ! arraign it! appealing
Up from the courts of the earth.”

But vaster another pale army, —
Fearful their ranks appear ;
Sweeping on, sacred, resistless,
The broken of heart draw near.
Phalanxes terrible, gentle,
Crying with outstretched hands :
“ Alas, for the anguish of women,
Wide as the seas and sands !

“ Sobs of the wife, of the mother,
Moans of the widowed maid ;
Our soldiers did sleep in their trenches.
We have lived on,” they said.
“ Ancient our suit is. Present it.
Who rights us, desolate ?
Man’s is the crime: we arraign him.
God’s is the bar: we wait.”

Compassionate of soul! Fused from an iron race,
Elect of heaven and thine own heart, sustain the case.
Peace, conquering, warred with war within thy regal veins ;
The bounding artery of mercy strong remains.
Be blest! For grateful tears of living and of dead
Shall melt and mist into a rainbow round thy head.
Crown of the Romanoffs on colder brows has shone;
But this, of all thy House, thou proudly wear’st alone.