Fraternity-Testvériség, 1941 (19. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1941-11-01 / 11. szám

18

TESTVÉRISÉG

talking or shouting, which may make a concussion in the air and bring down an avalanche.

A love of liberty which spreads, unstraitened by any line Actual or merely understood, of the mountain or the brine; Bound to no name, bound to no creed, or language, living or dead,

Fired by no fued of former time, by tariff or treaty unfed, Unawed by the superstitions, the bugbears of selfish souls, But pure as the God that it comes from and broad as the space of the poles.

Poor, poor the vaunt of liberty which ends where it began, Within some segment space of earth — some bounded field of man:

Which, soothed in calm self-preference, on the sunny slopes of life.

Can look on the shrieking brotherhoods with their tyrant foes at strife,

And purdently balance the marker-scales which hold, full deftly weighed,

The rights and the blood of humanity against the gains of trade.

Yes, the world moves! but boast no more, swollen in your self-esteem,

These Ariels of the Lightning-wire — these Calibans of Steam; If still our souls are as they were — if no new truth be born Supplanting those creeds and polities, past, vamped, revived, outworn;

A nation’s moral should aspire, beyond its industrial craft, As the proud consummate capital, and crowning grace of the shaft.

What boots it what our age may know, if this it will not know? Such is thy thought, heroic heart! and this thy thought shall grow.

Not upon barren souls, believe, hath fallen the glowing word Of the noblest human evangil these latter times have heard; It germs in the breasts of millions — the seeds thy hands have sown;

And its fruit shall yet be reaped on erath — but not with the sickle alone.

There’s a pause, like the pause of Nature, — of the breeze, the brute, the bird,—

With a vague sense of the hurricane, ere its first light step has stirred,

A muttering of the nations, ere their angry strength combine To burst on the troubled kings again, through all their reeling line —

Ere Europe’s Rainbow-angel (1) stand, sublime on the sea and the shore,

And swear that the sway of tyranny and its time shall be no more!