ose.

DRAGON INCURSIONS

I

O Freedom! whose pure soul and heart embrace
Translates me into heaven, I draw for breath
The joy of angels who have not known death.
Child-like, I look up in thy loving face,
Else gaze around and point, and curious place
My hand on Mottoes, hung on high. One saith:
"Beware, for he not with me scatterith."
Its meaning comes to me with growth, like grace.

Ah, as a youngster, on its mother's arm,
Seeing a hideous thing approaching night,
Will not lay down its head and shut its eye,
But will with look and lung express alarm--
My mind cries out in dread--when sea and sky
Show dragons, tendencies that work thee harm.

II

O Freedom! Up to whose raised hand the seas
Leap, playful lions, or with head and main
Across their paws lie couchant--it is pain
To see thee whose heart beats are God's decrees,
And vital breathings are infinities,
Now check thy heart and hold thy breath to gain
The smile and plaudit of a depths with bane
In finger tips, while fawning on their knees.

What! Think the tyrant, whose great soul is trade,
Whose history, a crater, belching black
And lurid, keeps glad Easter morning back
From half the world--loves thee save to invade,
As blackward planned? loves thee, along whose track
March Human rights up to the stars parade?

NEMESIS

There where the Tyrant long has loomed, wreck-crowned,
Are young and old hurled to the coast and blast.
Frail are their ships; still, Sun, why glare aghast,
Watching the billows monstering around?
The soul of man was not born to be drowned.
It mounts and mounts, till, at God's throne, at last,
And freedom welcomes it with arms, sky-vast,
As down it comes to meet Thrall and confound.

O, deathless spirit, born of hosts sea-hurled,
Who hast out soared night's stars with agony's cry
For justice! Thou hast come down from the sky,
Heralding doom to Thrall, whose flag unfurled
By steel, or craft, shows, as 'tis hoisted high,
The blood of man and ruin of the world.

ALL STARS MERGED IN ONE

What is the Truth? The thought, the act, or cry,
Recasting the Supreme Intelligence;
All else is false. Look! where are stars so dense,
That each has not the freedom of the sky?
And, still, what peace, what glory, reigns on high!