Poem by Donald Robert Perry Marquis

A Hymn

            (1914)

Clothed on with thunder and with steel
   And black against the dawn
The whirling armies clash and reel. . . .
   A wind, and they are gone
   Like mists withdrawn,
   Like mists withdrawn!

Like clouds withdrawn, like driven sands,
   Earth's body vanisheth:
One solid thing unconquered stands,
   The ghost that humbles death.
   All else is breath,
   All else is breath!

Man rose from out the stinging slime,
   Half brute, and sought a soul,
And up the starrier ways of time,
   Half god, unto his goal,

   He still must climb,
   He still must climb!

What though worlds stagger, and the suns
   Seem shaken in their place,
Trust thou the leaping love that runs
   Creative over space:
   Take heart of grace,
   Take heart of grace!

What though great kingdoms fall on death
   Before the stabbing blade,
Their brazen might was only breath,
   Their substance but a shade—
   Be not dismayed,
   Be not dismayed!

Man's dream which conquered brute and clod
   Shall fail not, but endure,
Shall rise, though beaten to the sod,
   Shall hold its vantage sure—
   As sure as God,
   As sure as God!

1. A Spider and a Fly
2. They Had No Poet …
3. Across the Night
4. Words Are Not Guns
5. The Rondeau

James Thomson A Hymn ("These, as they change, Almighty Father, these")

Print

1722 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version