The Desecraters · An Alliance · The Ancient of Days

The Desecraters

Witness all: that unrepenting,
  Feathers flying, music high,
I go down to death unshaken
  By your mean philosophy.

For your wages, take my body,
  That at least to you I leave;
Set the sulky plumes upon it,
  Bid the grinning mummers grieve.

Stand in silence: steep your raiment
  In the night that hath no star;
Don the mortal dress of devils,
  Blacker than their spirits are.

Since ye may not, of your mercy,
  Ere I lie on such a hearse,
Hurl me to the living jackals
  God hath built for sepulchres.

An Alliance

This is the weird of a world-old folk,
  That not till the last link breaks,
Not till the night is blackest,
  The blood of Hengist wakes.
When the sun is black in heaven,
  The moon as blood above,
And the earth is full of hatred,
  This people tells its love.

In change, eclipse, and peril,
  Under the whole world's scorn,
By blood and death and darkness
  The Saxon peace is sworn;
That all our fruit be gathered,
   And all our race take hands,
And the sea be a Saxon river
   That runs through Saxon lands.

Lo! not in vain we bore him;
   Behold it! not in vain,
Four centuries' dooms of torture
   Choked in the throat of Spain,
Ere priest or tyrant triumph—
  We know how well—we know—
Bone of that bone can whiten,
  Blood of that blood can flow.

Deep grows the hate of kindred,
  Its roots take hold on hell;
No peace or praise can heal it,
  But a stranger heals it well.
Seas shall be red as sunsets,
  And kings' bones float as foam,
And heaven be dark with vultures,
  The night our son comes home.

The Ancient of Days

A child sits in a sunny place,
  Too happy for a smile,
And plays through one long holiday
  With balls to roll and pile;
A painted wind-mill by his side
  Runs like a merry tune,
But the sails are the four great winds of heaven,
  And the balls are the sun and moon.

A staring doll's-house shows to him
  Green floors and starry rafter,
And many-coloured graven dolls
  Live for his lonely laughter.
The dolls have crowns and aureoles,
  Helmets and horns and wings.
For they are the saints and seraphim,
  The prophets and the kings.