Around those memoried tracks of scarlet mud,

To sow her future from an ashen urn
By lantern-light, as dragons' teeth are sown?

Of bleeding pride the piercing seer is blind.
But, cleared her eyes of that ensanguined scud

Distorting her true features, to be shown
Benignly luminous, one who bears

Humanity at breast, and she might learn
How surely the excelling generous find

Renouncement is possession. Sure
As light enkindles light when heavenlyearthly mates,

The flame of pure immits the flame of pure,
Magnanimous magnanimous creates.

So to majestic beauty stricken rears
Hard-visaged rock against the risen glow;

And men are in the secret with the spheres,
Whose glory is celestially to bestow.

Now nation looks to nation, that may live
Their common nurseling, like the torrent's flower,

Shaken by foul Destruction's fast-piled heap.
On France is laid the proud initiative

Of sacrifice in one self-mastering hour,
Whereby more than her lost one will she reap;

Perchance the very lost regain,
To count it less than her superb reward.

Our Europe, where is debtor each to each,
Pass measure of excess, and war is Cain,

Fraternal from the Seaman's beach,
From answering Rhine in grand accord,

From Neva beneath Northern cloud,
And from our Transatlantic Europe loud,

Will hail the rare example for their theme;
Give response, as rich foliage to the breeze;

In their entrusted nurseling know them one:
Like a brave vessel under press of steam,

Abreast the winds and tides, on angry seas,
Plucked by the heavens forlorn of present sun,

Will drive through darkness, and, with faith supreme,
Have sight of haven and the crowded quays.

THE CAGEING OF ARES
[Iliad, v. V. 385--Dedicated to the Council at The Hague.]

How big of breast our Mother Gaea laughed
At sight of her boy Giants on the leap

Each over other as they neighboured home,
Fronting the day's descent across green slopes,

And up fired mountain crags their shadows danced.
Close with them in their fun, she scarce could guess,

Though these two billowy urchins reeked of craft,
It signalled some adventurous master-trick

To set Olympians buzzing in debate,
Lest it might be their godhead undermined,

The Tyranny menaced. Ephialtes high
On shoulders of his brother Otos waved

For the bull-bellowings given to grand good news,
Compact, complexioned in his gleeful roar

While Otos aped the prisoner's wrists and knees,
With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls;

Till Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched,
And both upon her bosom shaken to speech,

Burst the hot story out of throats of both,
Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut

The hurried spout. And as when drifting storm
Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon

A peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleam
Of grass and the river's crooks and snaky coils,

Signification marvellous she caught,
Through gurglings of triumphant jollity,

Which now engulphed and now gave eye; at last
Subsided, and the serious naked deed,

With mountain-cloud of laughter banked around,
Stood in her sight confirmed: she could believe

That these, her sprouts of promise, her most prized,
These two made up of lion, bear and fox,

Her sportive, suckling mammoths, her young joy,
Still by the reckoning infants among men,

Had done the deed to strike the Titan host
In envy dumb, in envious heart elate:

These two combining strength and craft had snared,
Enmeshed, bound fast with thongs, discreetly caged

The blood-shedder, the terrible Lord of War;
Destroyer, ravager, superb in plumes;

The barren furrower of anointed fields;
The scarlet heel in towns, foul smoke to sky,

Her hated enemy, too long her scourge:
Great Ares. And they gagged his trumpet mouth

When they had seized on his implacable spear,
Hugged him to reedy helplessness despite

His godlike fury startled from amaze.
For he had eyed them nearing him in play,

The giant cubs, who gambolled and who snarled,
Unheeding his fell presence, by the mount

Ossa, beside a brushwood cavern; there
On Earth's original fisticuffs they called

For ease of sharp dispute: whereat the God,
Approving, deemed that sometime trained to arms,

Good servitors of Ares they would be,
And ply the pointed spear to dominate

Their rebel restless fellows, villain brood
Vowed to defy Immortals. So it chanced

Amusedly he watched them, and as one
The lusty twain were on him and they had him.

Breath to us, Powers of air, for laughter loud!
Cock of Olympus he, superb in plumes!

Bound like a wheaten sheaf by those two babes!
Because they knew our Mother Gaea loathed him,

Knew him the famine, pestilence and waste;
A desolating fire to blind the sight

With splendour built of fruitful things in ashes;
The gory chariot-wheel on cries for justice;

Her deepest planted and her liveliest voice,
Heard from the babe as from the broken crone.

Behold him in his vessel of bronze encased,
And tumbled down the cave. But rather look -

Ah, that the woman tattler had not sought,
Of all the Gods to let her secret fly,

Hermes, after the thirteen songful months!
Prompting the Dexterous to work his arts,

And shatter earth's delirious holiday,
Then first, as where the fountain runs a stream,

Resolving to composure on its throbs.
But see her in the Seasons through that year;

That one glad year and the fair opening month.
Had never our Great Mother such sweet face!

War with her, gentle war with her, each day
Her sons and daughters urged; at eve were flung,

On the morrow stood to challenge; in their strength
Renewed, indomitable; whereof they won,

From hourly wrestlings up to shut of lids,
Her ready secret: the abounding life