A voice of pleading choked with tears,
The call of human hopes and fears,
The Macedonian cry to Paul!

The storm-bell rings, the trumpet blows;
I know the word and countersign;
Wherever Freedom's vanguard goes,
Where stand or fall her friends or foes,
I know the place that should be mine.

Shamed be the hands that idly fold,

And lips that woo the reed's accord, When laggard Time the hour has tolled For true with false and new with old

To fight the battles of the Lord!

O brothers! blest by partial Fate
With power to match the will and deed,
To him your summons comes too late
Who sinks beneath his armor's weight,

And has no answer but God-speed!

I

WAIT and watch: before my eyes

Methinks the night grows thin and gray;

I wait and watch the eastern skies

To see the golden spears uprise

Beneath the oriflamme of day!

Like one whose limbs are bound in trance
I hear the day sounds swell and grow,
And see across the twilight glance,
Troop after troop, in swift advance,

The shining ones with plumes of snow!

I know the errand of their feet,

I know what mighty work is theirs;

I can but lift up hands unmeet,

The threshing-floors of God to beat,

And speed them with unworthy prayers.

I will not dream in vain despair

The steps of progress wait for me:
The puny leverage of a hair

The planet's impulse well may spare,
A drop of dew the tided sea.

The loss, if loss there be, is mine,
And yet not mine if understood;
For one shall grasp and one resign,
One drink life's rue, and one its wine,
And God shall make the balance good.

O power to do! O baffled will!

0 prayer and action! ye are one; Who may not strive, may yet fulfil

The harder task of standing still,

And good but wished with God is done!

Your brows, and lay your cloudy mantles by! And once more, ere the eyes that seek ye fail, Uplift against the blue walls of the sky

Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine weave Its golden network in your belting woods, Smile down in rainbows from your falling floods,

And on your kingly brows at morn and eve

Set crowns of fire! So shall my soul receive

Haply the secret of your calm and strength,
Your unforgotten beauty interfuse

My common life, your glorious shapes and hues

And sun-dropped splendors at my bidding

come,

Loom vast through dreams, and stretch in

billowy length

From the sea-level of my lowland home!

They rise before me! Last night's thunder-gust Roared not in vain: for where its lightnings thrust

Their tongues of fire, the great peaks seem so

near,

Burned clean of mist, so starkly bold and clear, I almost pause the wind in the pines to hear, The loose rock's fall, the steps of browsing deer. The clouds that shattered on yon slide-worn walls