The Poet in Times of Confusion — Der Dichter in Zeiten der Wirren

In placid times they say the poet is
A winged child who sings his tender dreams
And showers beauty on a busy world.
But when abuses swell into a storm,
And Destiny pounds at the door his verses
Ring like a pick on ore and are misheard.

When all are blinded he, the only seer,
Unveils the coming doom in vain, and though
The cries of a Cassandra fill the house,¹
The frantic rabble sees one thing alone:
The horse, the horse, and rushes to its death.²

A prophet may foretell the anger of
The tribal god, the trot of Assur's thousands³
Which drag the chosen people into bondage,
The clever council has more sure report,
Derides the warner, shuts him in a cell.

And when the Holy City is besieged
Burghers and warriors jostle in confusion,
Within the lords and priests have bloody quarrels
For broomsticks, while without the stoutest bulwark
Is falling, he is silent and he sighs.

But when the victor rides, and loots, and burns,
And saddles man and woman with his yoke,
Then some in foaming rage reject their guilt
And charge the fault to other hands, and some
Weary with hunger, struggle for the crust
The shameless conqueror throws, and numb themselves
With bawdy mirth, and lick the foot that downed them.
He stays aloof, the only one who feels
The utter wretchedness, the utter shame.

"Go to the peaks once more, go to your spirits,
And bring a better solace to relieve us
Of this affliction," clamours an old man.
What boots a voice from skies when no one listens
To simple sense? What boots the talk of spirit
When there is not a single urge in common
Save fight for food?

When every guild reproaches
The other and upholds its flimsy craft
Although it foundered, looks for help in increase
Of darling gadgets? When the wisest babble
Of new construction built on ancient vices,
And counsel: Shrink to worms so that the thunder
May spare you and the lightning fail to strike!

The living of this epoch who have wandered
Through long distress will always burn their incense
To every promise of the lying idols
That hurl them into serfdom and destruction,
For they forgot their noblest inner law
And what allows them to survive, rejected
Faith in a lord and need of an atoner,
And want to dodge their destiny with guile.

Still harsher ploughs must break those clods to furrows,
Still denser vapours must oppress the air,
And not a glint of blue will pierce the darkness
And fall upon the people of our era,
Until all those who speak a common tongue
Join hands, and arm against corruption, tear
The faded tatters of their flags, regardless
Of red or blue or black, and think of nothing
Except another Vespers — day and night!

But in a mournful age it is the poet
Who keeps the marrow sound, the germ alive.
He stirs the holy flame that leaps across
And shapes the flesh in which to burn, discovers
The truth of tidings which our fathers gave:
That those elected to the highest goal
Begin by passing through the waste, that once
The heart of Europe shall redeem the earth.

And when the final hope has almost perished
In sternest grief, his eyes already see
A light to come. Unstained by venal mobs,
By threadbare minds and follies steeped in poison,
A younger generation rises toward him,
The youths who, steeled by years of galling pressure,
Again have honest standards for the probe
Of men and things, who — fair and grave and proud —
In alien worlds accept themselves for what
They are, avoid the rocks of brazen boasting
And the morass of would-be brotherhood,
Spat out the lifeless, stale, and base, and from
Their consecrated dreams, and deeds, and sorrows
Begot the only one who can restore.

He breaks the chains and sweeps aside the rubble,
He scourges home the lost to lasting law,
Where lord is lord again, the great is great
And where integrity returns. He fastens
The true device upon the nation's banner.⁴
Through tempests and the dread fanfares of dawning
He leads his tried and faithful to the work
Of sober day and founds the Kingdom Come.