(To Thomas Moult)
Then suddenly ...
A thunder was heard like the cracking of suns,
A blackness blacker than blood there came
To choke the world with a fume and a flame.
A palsy fell on the guns.
A numbness froze the hands
Of the gunners in all the lands.
Half-way over the parapet
The limbs of the climbing infantry set
Like limbs of basalt-stone.
The bayonets fell from the fingers numb,
The throats of the officers dried dead-dumb,
For the Terror had come, the Terror had come,
The Terror out of the stark Unknown!
The Shadow was fallen upon the wars
That had raged three centuries long
To shatter the Lie and Wrong,
From the ice-fanged polar jaws,
With never a lull nor pause,
And over the Temperate Zone,
With never a moment's rest,
And over the Burning Line,
With never a halting sign,
And over the East and West,
And down to the ultimate mouth
Of the white Antarctic South.
From the torpid Esquimo-man
Who slew his Esquimo-mate
And poured his fat in a plate,
And lit up a wick therein,
And studied the secret plan
For the poisonous new harpoon.
Wherewith he was going to win
The Esquimo-battle soon.
From the Esquimo-man to the sinister black
Cannibal-boy in his skeleton-shack,
Whose ardent patriot labours
Were extracting the eyes of his foes,
The bones of their fingers and toes,
To teach them never to violate
The inter-cannibal laws of State,
And the boundary-stone of his weaker neighbours.
But now ...
Great God,
What is the menace,
Now,
The shadow, the thunder,
Now,
Ice on my heart,
Flame on my brow,
The skies dispart,
Lightnings rift through the obscene glooms,
The thews of the darkness are rent in sunder,
And a voice, a voice, a voice,
A great voice booms!
"Children of Earth,
Listen a moment before ye die.
We have waited long, we have waited long,
(Children of Mars, lift up your song,
For the children of Mars shall be lords of the sky!)
Long have we patiently waited
In a huge red planetous hall.
But never a wind of ruth or grace
Blew through the marshes of your earth-face.
And deeper into the hole
Of your cavernous earthen soul,
Deeper than God and Love and all,
Boulders of evil fall.
Long have we patiently waited
In a huge red planetous hall,
But never a grace not violated,
Never a devil ye did not call!
You have torn, you have torn,
The flowers by their roots, consumed the seed,
Wherever a flower was, planted a weed.
In the pitch of your scorn
Defiled the morn,
Bitten deep death in the mould and the corn.
You have eaten the wings
Of the lily-like frail
Butterfly caught in your treacherous veil.
You have festered the springs
With the corpses ye slew
And given your children to drink of the brew.
Never a grace not violated,
Left God never a roof nor wall;
Never a passion ye have not sated,
Never a devil ye did not call.
And a Word came forth from the Sun to Mars,
'Gird ye now for the final wars!
For over the planet of Earth,
Wooden and waste and wide,
Great red wounds in his side,
A shadow, a bloodless dearth
Ashen-pale in the caves of his eyes,
Throwing the ghost of a Cross on the skies,
The body of Christ lies crucified!'
We have come with a gladness terrible to behold.
We have come to reclaim the Godhead that was sold.
The levins we shall loosen ye have not ever known,
And the breath of our singing shall fall on you like stone.
Our weapons shall be flame and the blades be keen,
And they shall not rest again till the skies be clean.
Our weapons shall be tides, the tide of the sea,
The surgings of the tide
Shall not again subside,
Until the Sun's sky-ways again shall be free!"
So the voice spake,
Thunderous and proud,
So the voice spake,
Then died in a cloud.
And then again the Darkness, the Darkness gathered round,
And the hushed world waited, but heard not a sound.
So hushed was the world, the slaying and the weeping,
So hushed was the world, the world seemed sleeping,
But lo! in the West,
Lo! in the West!
Leaping, leaping,
A tongue of fire ...