No More Learning

You have no word to break: no heart to harden.
Ride on and prosper. You have lost your spurs.

_Gilbert Keith Chesterton_




RUSSIA--AMERICA


A wind in the world! The dark departs;
The chains now rust that crushed men's flesh and bones,
Feet tread no more the mildewed prison stones,
And slavery is lifted from your hearts.

A wind in the world! O Company
Of darkened Russia, watching long in vain,
Now shall you see the cloud of Russia's pain
Go shrinking out across a summer sky.

A wind in the world! Our God shall be
In all the future left, no kingly doll
Decked out with dreadful sceptre, steel, and stole,
But walk the earth--a man, in Charity.

* * * * *

A wind in the world! And doubts are blown
To dust along, and the old stars come forth--
Stars of a creed to Pilgrim Fathers worth
A field of broken spears and flowers strown.

A wind in the world! Now truancy
From the true self is ended; to her part
Steadfast again she moves, and from her heart
A great America cries: Death to Tyranny!

A wind in the world! And we have come
Together, sea by sea; in all the lands
Vision doth move at last, and Freedom stands
With brightened wings, and smiles and beckons home!
_John Galsworthy_




TO RUSSIA NEW AND FREE


Land of the Martyrs--of the martyred dead
And martyred living--now of noble fame!
Long wert thou saddest of the nations, wed
To Sorrow as the fire to the flame,
Not yet relentless History had writ of Teuton shame.

Thou knewest all the gloom of hope deferred.
'Twixt God and Russia wrong had built such bar
Each by the other could no more be heard.
Seen through the cloud, the child's familiar star,
That once made Heaven near, had made it seem more far.

Land of the Breaking Dawn! No more look back
To that long night that nevermore can be:
The sunless dungeon and the exile's track.
To the world's dreams of terror let it flee.
To gentle April cruel March is now antiquity.

Yet--of the Past one sacred relic save:
That boundary-post 'twixt Russia and Despair,--
Set where the dead might look upon his grave,--
Kissed by him with his last-breathed Russian air.
Keep it to witness to the world what heroes still may dare.

Land of New Hope, no more the minor key,
No more the songs of exile long and lone;
Thy tears henceforth be tears of memory.
Sing, with the joy the joyless would have known
Who for this visioned happiness so gladly gave their own.

Land of the warm heart and the friendly hand,
Strike the free chord; no more the muted strings!
Forever let the equal record stand--
A thousand winters for this Spring of Springs,
That to a warring world, through thee, millennial longing brings.

On thy white tablets, cleansed of royal stain,
What message to the future mayst thou write!