(Phi Beta Kappa poem, Tufts College, May, 1935)

Young Conservative

We think the time has come to use our world.

We have not words to our will. Our words are stiff

And honest; proud, unornamented words

To say we wish to use our world in peace.

You poets know the words. Say this for us:

Power we shall not fight for, only strength.

There are no longer mountain peaks to climb,

Islands to set a flag on, towns to name,

With danger's arrow aimed from every bush.

We are accustomed now, and come of age.

The world is ours, though we remember deeds

And deaths and dreams our fathers' fathers knew.

This is the world we love; not bright; not dark;

But ours to live in as we choose to live,

Bracing the timbers underneath the house,

Perfecting rhythms of resistance now

Against disorder, countermining death,

Making a skill of love, and keeping clean.

Sing to this generation, poets. Say:

Now shall we watch the seasons with a care

Only to keep our wisdom warm and whole.

Young Revolutionary

This is the world: a mad, a blundering world,

Where to be wise is folly, where to be wise

Is best in silence, yet speak out we must.

We think the meek will not inherit earth.

Time is too short to praise the blowing trees,

Or read the poetry of streets and clouds.

But even a little, by our angry wills,

To bend stiff necks, or halt the pleasure hunt,

Or change the drift of history, is good.

We hear the sound of empire falling now,

And civil war inside the skull is stale.

It is no longer I, and mine, my grief,

My gladdened heart, my luck, my will be done,

But all mankind at home on earth in peace

That needs our passion with our wisdom now.

Poets, be worth your bread and salt for once;

Sing this to the future if you would be heard.

The Poet

Bid me to live, and I shall live, your lips,

Your limbs, your eyes, your angry wills to be,

And teach your disagreement not in vain,

Setting your double passions in the sky

So close that lightning links them there;

Then, looking up from life, men still unborn

Will catch that color to their hearts again.

But bid me die, conscript me in your cause,

And all of us will die, or live till rock

In rain and winter splits, and the carven name

Slides with the dust to dust and nothingness.

Young Conservative

A long time saying neither yes or no,

We have been lookers-on, have learned at last

How simply the hand is filled to fill the heart.

Here where we are the roofs have not come down .

Decline and fall of empire is but a long

Crumbling away of headlands into surf.

Here where we are, and all this evil time,

Shine on us morning, noon, and afternoon.

Here are the children's cries, the hands of love,

The roads and rivers winding over earth,

The eyes to stare with at the stars and waves.

Here is the record of a life to make.

All these have been; and are; and these will be.

Our hearts are whole. Let us alone to live.

We think the time has come to use our world,

And war no more, but use our world in peace.

Young Revolutionary

We may not use our world in peace; not yet;

Not while oppression crowds us anywhere,

Beats down our heads and blinds our staring eyes,

Or breaks the hand that has not filled the heart.

We read the papers, then we hurried home,

But there we could not ear, and could not sleep,

And could not stand, but walked the floor, and cursed,

Thinking of murder in Vienna streets.

Then we were sick with helplessness and grief.

No one shall sleep the night away, or laugh?

Or read, or love a friend, but they must think

Their laughter, love, and health and easy sleep

Must yet be earned with vengeance. Now our hearts

Are whole, and we, too, think the time has come.

The Poet

Neither or both your banners; never one.

To be so racked and outraged by the news,

So cramped by such particulars, the date,

The hour, the number dead, the ugly cause-

This indignation channels you too close.

Rather recover. Cancel death's advance,

And elsewhere make life wider in this world.

So with retreat. It quenches wildfire life,

Picks from a rich variety of veins

One, and will ride on that without a risk.

The poet throws fuel down on every blaze

That warms the chilly world or lights the mind.

There are no promises that he must keep,

Except to say, I am, to say, Life is,

And how the tides and airs and seasons run,

Surging and breaking hard upon his heart.

There are no promises the poet must keep,

Unless to mourn the good Samaritan as dead,

Or gone away, forgotten, lost to mind.

Where are the voices crying aloud, Come back,

Samaritan, and teach us how to live?

We hear the men of power, and men at odds

Cry, Peace, Peace; and there is no peace on earth.

Surly and frightened, selfish, heartsick, hard,

The voices beat on each other in the night,

Naming a hundred doors to life and peace,

But not one cries the human name of love.

Young Revolutionary

Before that far-off, longed-for time of peace,

The day will come, mark us, the time must come,

When such as we will crest a rising tide

That topples and levels all to brotherhood,

Divinities and magistrates with men.

The slack years hide much blood, enfold much wrong;

They muffle murder with soft history

And dust, till live men choke and smother there.

When right is looped and nailed up like a flag

Cracking above the world-wide commonwealth,

And all salute, then ranks of fire will march,

Then blocks of bells will ring, to celebrate

The fatal end of sickness and despair

That music could not mend, nor bugles boast,

Nor one more generation yet endure.

Before great peace will come the last great war.

Young Conservative

O comrades, have you heard how one of us

Hovered above the city in his dream?

He spied on warm suburban street and roof,

Circled the downtown towers, then overland,

Hunting the outpost line, the arsenal,

The war a class prepares against a class.

But have you heard there is to be no war?

Too many living. Too much life. Too strong

A hope driving ten million single hearts

To rouse to war, he said in his report.

Searching the long horizon round the rim,

He looked, he said, beyond it into time:

There is a different season coming in ,

With swifter nightfall, sky blown bare and blue;

With vacant afternoons, and angry dust

Riding the curves of wind. Thunder will crack,

And still the enormous leaning clouds be dry,

And crooked shadows lie along the ground.

But slow as the season ages, while our fears

Mount in the throat at these unprophesied,

Unheard-of afternoons and nights and winds,

This weather will go by, and all at last

As ever come to the green heart of June.

Young Revolutionary

Lauro de Bosis, airman, not in dream,

But skilful, hopeless, mad, Icarian flight,

Scattered a million letters down like snow

To rouse Italians to rebellious war,

And made his death a weapon and a flag.

No one knows where the body fell and broke,

Or the burning motor plunged and died,

But the world knows what gave de Bosis wings.

My people sleep, he said, they lie bewitched

In chains a child could break from if he would.

That they may wake, rise, turn, be fierce, be free,

Someone must die, he said. And now we hear

All day in the dark stairway of the blood

Rebellion climbing to that little room,

The heart, there to demand great reckoning.

We wait. We welcome one event so taut

That action beats upon it like a drum.

The Poet

Poetry runs to help that sharp tattoo,

But all for its relish in the ultimate,

To stretch itself in storm; as poetry would

To be there first where time with streaming flags

Declares new boundaries; as poetry would

To marvel at a green tree wound with sun,

To see a young man live almost unscarred,

Mature in danger, passionate for peace,

Who wears flesh tight about his bones and bright,

His breath too quick for strangling, and his will,

With caring for his generation, harsh.

Poetry serves the living; rounds one hope

Or all; gives grace, and sweeps that grace with light;

Reminds all men that Time with sliding step,

And Death with sudden stride, walk at their heels.

But gives, warns, glorifies, in freedom best.

Poetry flashes, cries, contends, rides hard.

Poetry rings right, marvels, summons to life

The soldier thoughts in arms lain down to sleep.

But these: the bonfire burning in the rain,

The moment made of light, the harvesters,

The longed-for dead; all these are poetry.

And these: blind skull, blue wind, persistent love,

And change, and memory, and grief: all these.

The world is one to poetry: the hawk

That hovers marking down its prey, plunges,

And strikes, is ignorant of county names.