Nor shall the cry of famine be a shield The altar of a brutish mood to hide. Stains, stains, upon the lintels of our doors Wail to be justified. Shall there be mutterings at the seasons' yield? Has eye of man seen bared the granary floors? Are the fields wasted? Spilled the oil and wine? Is the fat seed under the clod decayed? Does ever the fig tree languish or the vine? Who has beheld the harvest promise fade? Or any orchard heavy with fruit asway Withered away? No, not these things, but grosser things than these Are the dim parents of a guilt not dim; Ancestral urges out of old caves blowing, When Fear watched at our coming and our going The horror of the chattering face of Whim. Hates, cruelties new fallen from the trees Whereto we clung with impulse sad for love, Shames we have had all time to rid us of, Disgraces cold and sorrows long bewept, Recalled, revived, and kept, Unmeaning quarrels, blood-compelling lust, And snarling woes from our old home, the dust. Yet even of these one saving shape may rise; Fear may unveil our eyes. For know you not what curse of blight would fall Upon a land lorn of the sweet sky races Who day and night keep ward and seneschal Upon the treasury of the planted spaces? Then would the locust have his fill, And the blind worm lay tithe, The unfed stones rot in the listless mill, The sound of grinding cease. No yearning gold would whisper to the scythe, Hunger at last would prove us of one blood, The shores of dream be drowned in tides of need, Horribly would the whole earth be at peace. The burden of the grasshopper indeed Weigh down the green corn and the tender bud, The plague of Egypt fall upon the wheat, And the shrill nit would batten in the heat. But you, O poor of deeds and rich of breath, Whose eyes have made our eyes a hue abhorred, Red, eager aids of aid-unneeding Death, Hunters before the Lord, If on the flinted marge about your souls In vain the heaving tide of mourning rolls, If from your trails unto the crimson goals The weeper and the weeping must depart, If lust of blood come on you like a fiery dart And darken all the dark autumnal air, Then, then -- be fair. Pluck a young ash tree or a sapling yew And at the root end fix an iron thorn, Then forth with rocking laughter of the horn And passing, with no belling retinue, All timorous, lesser sippers of the dew, Seek out some burly guardian of the hills And set your urgent thew against his thew. Then shall the hidden wisdoms and the wills Strive, and bear witness to the trees and clods How one has dumb lore of the rocks and swales And one has reason like unto the gods. Then shall the lagging righteousness ensue, The powers at last be equal in the scales, And the man's club and the beast's claw be flails To winnow the unworthy of the two. Then on the earth, in the sky and the heavenly court That broods behind it, Justice shall be awakened and aware, Then those who go forth greatly, seeking sport, Shall doubtless find it, And all things be fair.