Wingless Victory
I
Victory! Was that proud word once so dear?
Are difficulty, patience, effort hard
As danger’s edge, disputing yard by yard
The adversary without and the mind’s fear,
Are these our only angels? friends austere
That find our hidden greatness out, and guard
From the weak hour’s betrayal faith unmarred!
For look! how we seem fall’n from what we were.
Worms feed upon the bodies of the brave
Who bled for us: but we bewildered see
Viler worms gnaw the things they died to save.
Old clouds of doubt and weariness oppress.
Happy the dead, we cry, not now to be
In the day of this dissolving littleness!
II
O you dear Dead, pardon! For not resigned,
We see, though humbled, half our purpose bent
And our hope blurred, like men in banishment.
Giants amid a blank mist groping blind,
The nations ache. And old greeds unconfined
Possess men, sick at battle’s blood hot—spent
Yet sleek and busy and righteously content
To wage war, safe and secret, on their kind.
If all were simple as the way of hate!
But we must reap where others sowed the seed
In time long past, of folly and pride and greed;
Confused with names, idols and polities;
Though over all earth, where we think a State,
There are but men and women; only these.
III
Victory, winged, has flown far off again.
She is in the soul, she travels with the light.
We see her on the distant mountain height
Desired, but she has left us in the plain,
Left us awhile, to chafe and to complain,
Yet keep our wills, in this dark time’s despite,
Like those that went up to the horrible fight
Beneath their burdens, plodding in the rain.
Courage! The same stuff that so greatly bore
And greatly did, is here, for gods to find,
And the dear human cause in the heart’s core.
Be the task always harder than we know,
And victory further, yet in pain we grow.
The vision is before us, not behind.
