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- To Edmund Clerihew Bentley
- A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,
- Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.
- Science announced nonentity and art admired decay;
- The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay;
- Round us in antic order their crippled vices came—
- Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame.
- Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom,
- Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume.
- Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung;
- The world was very old indeed when you and I were young.
- They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named:
- Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.
- Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus;
- When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us
- Children we were—our forts of sand were even as weak as we,
- High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea.
- Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd,
- When all church bells were silent our cap and bells were heard.
- Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled;
- Some giants laboured in that cloud to lift it from the world.
- I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings
- Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things;
- And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pass,
- Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of grass;
- Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain—
- Truth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of pain.
- Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey,
- Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day.
- But we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter charms.
- God and the good Republic come riding back in arms:
- We have seen the City of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved—
- Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed.
- This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells,
- And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells—
- Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash,
- Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash.
- The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand—
- Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand?
- The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain,
- And day had broken on the streets e’er it broke upon the brain.
- Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told;
- Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old.
- We have found common things at last and marriage and a creed,
- And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read.
- G. K. C.
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