the captain of thy soul!

ORIENT TO OCCIDENT, 1906

You thought me sunk in lethargy, too deeply drugged with sleep
To notice how your armored fleets kept creeping o'er the deep,
Too indolent to organize, too feeble to resist,
Too timid to return the blow of Europe's mailed fist;
And Asia's conquest seemed to you a matter of such ease
That all your kings knew perfectly the part which each would seize.
Of such a "sluggish, inert mass" why should you be afraid?
You wanted ports and provinces for purposes of trade,
And monster "spheres of influence", whose wealth could be controlled
And plundered by your Governments to fill their vaults with gold;
Hence, since it seemed so probable that none of us would fight,
Why should you even hesitate to prove that Might makes Right?

And yet perhaps it had been well, before you formed your plan,
To study Asia's history from Persia to Japan;
For though the sleeping Orient, like grain before the blast,
May bow its head, it rights itself when once the storm is past.
How often has the Occident invaded our domains
And boasted of its victories! Yet of them what remains?
Seems India exceptional? Fools, judge not by a day!
The horologe of centuries moves slowly in Cathay.
The brilliant son of Macedon saw, crushed and pale with fear,
The vanquished East from Babylon to Egypt and Cashmere;
But though the conquered Orient lay helpless, as his slave,
Of Alexander's influence how much survived his grave?
Of Rome's prodigious armaments, to Asian conquests led,
Where is there now a souvenir save relics of the dead?
And of the vast Crusading hosts, which in their madness rose
And hurled themselves repeatedly upon their Moslem foes,--
What is to-day the net result? A thousand years have passed,
But none of all their vaunted gains proved great enough to last;
The Saviour's tomb, Jerusalem, and all the sacred lands
Connected with the Christian faith are still in Asian hands!

We needed rude awakening to rouse us from our sloth;
It came among our northern isles, whose heroes, nothing loth,
Unbarred their ports to modern fleets, their ancient life forswore,
And learned from greedy foreigners the Christians' art of war.
Behold! the world in fifty years is breathless with surprise,
And Europe's greatest Government has sought us for allies!
That little section of our mass aroused itself, and lo!
Your largest Occidental Power has reeled beneath the blow;
And while our living troops receive men's