In After Days
I will accomplish that and this,
And make myself a thorn to Things–
Lords, councillors and tyrant kings–
Who sit upon their thrones and kiss
The rod of Fortune; and are crowned
The sovereign masters of the earth
To scatter blight and death and dearth
Wherever mortal man is found.
I will do this and that, and break
The backbone of their large conceit,
And loose the sandals from their feet,
And show ’tis holy ground they shake.
So sang I in my earlier days,
Ere I had learned to look abroad
And see that more than monarchs trod
Upon the form I fain would raise.
Ere I, in looking toward the land
That broke a triple diadem,
That grasped at Freedom’s garment hem,
Had seen her, sword and torch in hand,
A freedom-fool: ere I had grown
To know that Love is freedom’s strength–
France taught the world that truth at length!–
And Peace her chief foundation stone.
Since then, I temper so my song
That it may never speak for blood;
May never say that ill is good;
Or say that right may spring from wrong:
Yet am what I have ever been–
A friend of Freedom, staunch and true,
Who hate a tyrant, be he–you–
A people,–sultan, czar, or queen!
And then the Freedom-haters came
And questioned of my former song,
If now I held it right, or wrong:
And still my answer was the same:–
The good still moveth towards the good:
The ill still moveth towards the ill:
But who affirmeth that we will
Not form a nobler brotherhood
When communists, fanatics, those
Who howl their 'vives’ to Freedom’s name
And yet betray her unto shame,
Are dead and coffined with her foes.
