Idyllic Monologues: Old and New World Verses — John Shaqi
Idyllic Monologues: Old and New World VersesCawein, Madison Julius
General
Idyllic Monologues: Old and New World Verses
Cawein, Madison Julius
American poetry
Behold! we have gathered together our battleships near and afar;
Their decks they are cleared for action, their guns they are shotted
for war:
From the East to the West there is hurry, in the North and the South
a peal
Of hammers in fort and shipyard, and the clamor and clang of steel;
And the roar and the rush of engines, and clanking of derrick and
crane--
Thou art weighed in the Scales and found wanting, the balance of God,
O Spain!
II.
Behold! I have stood on the mountains, and this was writ in the
sky:--
"She is weighed in the Scales and found wanting, the balance God
holds on high!"
The balance He once weighed Babylon, the Mother of Harlots, in:
One scale holds thy pride and thy power and empire, begotten of sin;
Heavy with woe and torture, the crimes of a thousand years,
Mortared and welded together with fire and blood and tears;
In the other, for justice and mercy, a blade with never a stain,
Is laid the Sword of Liberty, and the balance dips, O Spain!
III.
Summon thy vessels together! great is thy need for these!--
Cristobal Colon, Vizcaya, Oquendo, and Maria Terese--
Let them be strong and many, for a vision I had by night,
That the ancient wrongs thou hast done the world came howling to the
fight;
From the New-World shores they gathered, Inca and Aztec slain,
To the Cuban shot but yesterday, and our own dead seamen, Spain!
IV.
Summon thy ships together, gather a mighty fleet!
For a strong young Nation is arming, that never hath known defeat.
Summon thy ships together, there on thy blood-stained sands!
For a shadowy army gathers with manacled feet and hands,
A shadowy host of sorrows and shames, too black to tell,
That reach, with their horrible wounds, for thee to drag thee down to
Hell;
A myriad phantoms and spectres, thou warrest against in vain--
Thou art weighed in the Scales and found wanting, the balance of God,
O Spain!
Her Vivien Eyes
Her Vivien eyes,--beware! beware!--
Though they be stars, a deadly snare
They set beneath her night of hair.
Regard them not! lest, drawing near--
As sages once in old Chaldee--
Thou shouldst become a worshiper,
And they thy evil destiny.
Her Vivien eyes,--away! away!--
Though they be springs, remorseless they
Gleam underneath her brow's bright day.
Turn, turn aside, whate'er the cost!
Lest in their deeps thou lures behold,
Through which thy captive soul were lost,
As was young Hylas once of old.
Her Vivien eyes,--take heed! take heed!--
Though they be bibles, none may read
Therein of God or Holy Creed.
Look, look away! lest thou be cursed,--
As Merlin was, romances tell,--
And in their sorcerous spells immersed,
Hoping for Heaven thou chance on Hell.
There Was a Rose
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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