Heroes, my children, Follow, O follow me, Follow, exulting In the great light that breaks From the sacred companionship: Thrust through the fatuous, Thrust through the fungous brood Spawned in my shadow And gross with my gift! Thrust through, and hearken, O hark, to the Trumpet, The Virgin of Battles, Calling, still calling you Into the Presence, Sons of the Judgment, Pure wafts of the Will! Edged to annihilate, Hilted with government, Follow, O follow me Till the waste places All the grey globe over Ooze, as the honeycomb Drips, with the sweetness Distilled of my strength: And, teeming in peace Through the wrath of my coming, They give back in beauty The dread and the anguish They had of me visitant! Follow, O follow, then, Heroes, my harvesters! Where the tall grain is ripe Thrust in your sickles: Stripped and adust In a stubble of empire, Scything and binding The full sheaves of sovranty: Thus, O thus gloriously, Shall you fulfil yourselves: Thus, O thus mightily, Show yourselves sons of mine-- Yea, and win grace of me: I am the Sword. I am the feast-maker: Hark, through a noise Of the screaming of eagles, Hark how the Trumpet, The mistress of mistresses, Calls, silver-throated And stern, where the tables Are spread, and the work Of the Lord is in hand! Driving the darkness, Even as the banners And spears of the Morning; Sifting the nations, The slag from the metal, The waste and the weak From the fit and the strong; Fighting the brute, The abysmal Fecundity; Checking the gross, Multitudinous blunders, The groping, the purblind Excesses in service, Of the Womb universal, The absolute Drudge; Changing the charactry Carved on the World, The miraculous gem In the seal-ring that burns On the hand of the Master-- Yea! and authority Flames through the dim, Unappeasable Grisliness Prone down the nethermost Chasms of the Void; Clear singing, clean slicing; Sweet spoken, soft finishing; Making death beautiful, Life but a coin To be staked in the pastime Whose playing is more Than the transfer of being; Arch-anarch, chief builder, Prince and evangelist, I am the Will of God: I am the Sword. _The Sword_ _Singing_-- _The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword_ _Clanging majestical_, _As from the starry-staired_ _Courts of the primal Supremacy_, _His high_, _irresistible song_. LONDON VOLUNTARIES (To Charles Whibley) I _Andante con mote_