"IS THERE ANY WORD FROM THE LORD?"
By John Vance Cheney
DAYLONG a craven cry rose up:
"The people drink a bitter cup.
They languish, gathering stones for bread;
Brave faith is fallen, the old hope dead."
The babblers will not cease:
"The people have no peace."
Trust is outworn; naught can be done;
There is no good under the sun;
The blue sky fades; the old faiths fail;
The strong hand shakes; the warriors wail.
Daylong the craven cry,
"The people faint, they die."
Are we, forsooth, so helpless, we
That vanquish air and earth and sea?
The sun shines yonder; somewhere glows
The old first hope bright as it rose,
The hope whose accent high
Shall brand this whining lie.
If doubts, risen idols of the Nile,
Again the hallowed land defile,
Thunder yet clothes green Horeb's crown;
Let Sinai speak, and smite them down.
Life rests yet in the clod;
Israel has still its God.
The seers, the prophets, poets—they
See yet the good gold in the day:
They of his line that conquered Saul
Can crowd small cowards to the wall;
They that were Athens' might
Can put pale wraiths to flight.
Poets, still red at heart, arise,
Sing back the blue into the skies,
Sing back the green into the grass,
And bid these sulking phantoms pass;
Yon dauntless sons of song
Can blast this dastard wrong.
Once more blest messengers declare
That love still lives, that life is fair,
Say knowledge knows not, trust is all,
And crush these wise which writhe and crawl;
Wake, wake your strains of fire;
God's for us—strike the lyre.
—John Vance Cheney, in Century.