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Poem by Sydney Thompson Dobell To 1862 (In Prospect Of War With America) I Oh worst of years, by what signs shall we know So dire an advent? Let thy New-Year's-day Be night. At the east gate let the sun lay His crown: as thro' a temple hung with woe Unkinged by mortal sorrow let him go Down the black noon, whose wan astrology Peoples the skyey windows with dismay, To that dark charnel in the west where lo! The mobled Moon! For so, at the dread van Of wars like ours, the great humanity In things not human should be wrought and wrung Into our sight, and creatures without tongue By the dumb passion of a visible cry Confess the coming agony of Man. II Even now, this spring in winter, like some young Fair Babe of Empire, ere his birth-bells ring, Shewn to the people by a hoary King, Stirs me with omens. What fine shock hath sprung The fairy mines of buried life among The clods? Above spring flow'rs a bird of spring Makes February of the winds that sing Yule-chants: while March, thro' Christmas brows, rimehung, Looks violets: and on yon grave-like knoll A girlish season sheds her April soul. Ah is this day that strains the exquisite Strung sense to finer fibres of delight An aimless sport of Time? Or do its show'rs, Smiles, birds and blooms betray the heart of conscious Pow'rs? III Methinks the innumerable eyes of ours That must untimely close in endless night Take in one sum their natural due of light: Feather'd like summer birds their unlived hours Sing to them: at their prison pitying flow'rs Push thro' the bars a Future red and white, Purple and gold: for them, for them, yon bright Star, as an eye, exstils and fills, and pours Its tear, and fills and weeps, to fill and weep: For them that Moon from her wild couch on high Now stretches arms that wooed Endymion, Now swooning back against the sky stares down Like some white mask of ancient tragedy With orbless lids that neither wake nor sleep. IV Hark! a far gun, like all war's guns in one, Booms. At that sign, from the new monument Of him who held the plough whereto he bent His royal sword, and meekly laboured on, Till when the verdict of mankind had gone Against our peace, he, waiving our consent, Carried the appeal to higher courts, and went Himself to plead-She whom he loved and won, The Queen of Earth and Sea,-her unrisen head Bowed in a sorrowy cloud-takes her slow way To her great throne, and, lifting up her day Upon her land, and to that flag unfurl'd Where wave the honour and the chastity Of all our men and maidens living and dead, Points westward, and thus breaks the silence of the world:- V 'Since it is War, my England, and nor I On you nor you on me have drawn down one Drop of this bloody guilt, God's Will be done, Here upon earth in woe, in bliss on high! Peace is but mortal and to live must die, And, like that other creature of the sun, Must die in fire. Therefore, my English, on! And burn it young again with victory! For me, in all your joys I have been first And in this woe my place I still shall keep, I am the earliest widow that must weep, My children the first orphans. The divine Event of all God knows: but come the worst It cannot leave your homes more dark than mine.' Sydney Thompson Dobell Sydney Thompson Dobell's other poems:
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