Volume 2 — The Redemption Of Europe
Reading edition
By ALFRED NOYES.
[From King Albert's Book.]
... donee templa refereris
Under which banner? It was night
Beyond all nights that ever were.
The Cross was broken. Blood-stained might
Moved like a tiger from its lair;
And all that heaven had died to quell
Awoke, and mingled earth with hell.
For Europe, if it held a creed,
Held it through custom, not through faith.
Chaos returned, in dream and deed.
Right was a legend; Love—a wraith;
And That from which the world began
Was less than even the best in man.
God in the image of a Snake
Dethroned that dream, too fond, too blind,
The man-shaped God whose heart could break,
Live, die, and triumph with mankind.
A Super-snake, a Juggernaut,
Dethroned the highest of human thought.
The lists were set. The eternal foe
Within us as without grew strong,
By many a super-subtle blow
Blurring the lines of right and wrong
In Art and Thought, till nought seemed true
But that soul-slaughtering cry of New!
New wreckage of the shrines we made
Thro' centuries of forgotten tears ...
We knew not where their scorn had laid
Our Master. Twice a thousand years
Had dulled the uncapricious Sun.
Manifold worlds obscured the One;
Obscured the reign of Law, our stay,
Our compass through this darking sea,
The one sure light, the one sure way,
The one firm base of Liberty:
The one firm road that men have trod
Through Chaos to the Throne of God.
Choose ye, a hundred legions cried,
Dishonor or the instant sword!
Ye chose. Ye met that blood-stained tide.
A little kingdom kept its word;
And, dying, cried across the night,
Hear us, O earth, we chose the Right!
Whose is the victory? Though ye stood
Alone against the unmeasured foe;
By all the tears, by all the blood
That flowed, and have not ceased to flow;
By all the legions that ye hurled:
Back, thro' the thunder-shaken world;
By the old that have not where to rest,
By the lands laid waste and hearths defiled;
By every lacerated breast,
And every mutilated child,
Whose is the victory? Answer ye,
Who, dying, smiled at tyranny?
Under the sky's triumphal arch
The glories of the dawn begin.
Our dead, our shadowy armies march
E'en now, in silence, through Berlin;
Dumb shadows, tattered, blood-stained ghosts
But cast by what swift following hosts?
And answer, England! At thy side,
Thro' seas of blood, thro' mists of tears,
Thou that for Liberty hast died
And livest, to the end of years!
And answer, Earth! Far off, I hear
The peans of a happier sphere:
The trumpet blown at Marathon
Resounded over earth and sea,
But burning angel lips have blown
The trumpets of thy Liberty;
For who, beside thy dead, could deem
The faith, for which they died, a dream?
Earth has not been the same since then.
Europe from thee received a soul,
Whence nations moved in law, like men,
As members of a mightier whole,
Till wars were ended.... In that day,
So shall our children's children say.