# Battle-Retrospect, and Other Poems/Battle-Retrospect

BATTLE-RETROSPECT.
Those sultry nights we used to pass outdoors And through the cherry orchards to the fields That stretched down to the floor of the Champagne, And there that steady thunder in the west That nightly rolled and echoed without rest Broke on our ears with new intensity. As those who come out suddenly upon The sea, whose murmur reached them in the woods, Are stunned by the loud-crashing surf that runs In surging thunder all along the coast, So the great breakers of this sea of sound Broke over us when we had reached the fields, And through the starry silences was borne That fluctuating roar, its rise and fall And climaxes that filled the soul with dread.
We saw the febrile flashes, hour by hour, Incessant, over many miles of front, Succeeding each the other instantly As though in some fantastical pursuit, In ever madder race. They shot their light To the last stars; the empyrean throbbed With man's device,—or were they men, or gods?
We saw the soaring signals flare and float, Likewise incessant, multitudinous, As though some city of the Vulcans lay Across the land with flaming forges bright, And panting furnaces that scorched the night, Hammering out the ribs of a new earth Or some new instrument of destiny.
A perturbation deeper far than fear Took hold on us, Never did man behold or hear A thing more ominous; So regular, so fierce, fatality ​Was in its voice; no power on earth Could halt that tempest for the briefest space, Nor cool that mighty furnace, nor reach down To guard the myriad souls within its blast.
Gazing upon that scene, it seemed there boiled Red lava from the ground, some mouth of hell Gaping, and smoking horror to the skies; Or that some molten tide of death swept down Beating relentlessly against the fields, The summer fields that would not be submerged.
And I have seen, or thought I saw, the gods (Mayhap the saints and devils of our faith) Gather like planing eagles in the dusk Above the battle and direct its course, Clashing in mid-air, sweeping in great troops To new reliefs and warring in the sky, Whose immanence translated the dark hour And sublimized the drama till it seemed A war of genii and a spectre strife, Enveloped in an Æschylean shade.
The dead are gone and we are left alive And those incredible and awful days Are now no more. Nay, e'en their memory Grows faded, and the fates that gave us them Seem jealous that we should retain so much As of forbidden knowledge. For no doubt In those days there moved giants on the earth, And it were better that these secrets lie Unhinted at to those who never knew Lest they find faith too easy. It were bad Were a dull generation born for trade To know that genii showed themselves those months Often, scaling horizons, bent on tasks Out of proportion to these times of peace, ​And that great prodigies of ministrants In aural loveliness would brood at night, Extraordinary comforters, come down To cope with like extraordinary pain. But faith and all its then ambassadors Have passed to some far corner of the skies And left earth to its winter of desires, Its ebb of passions and its leafless trees.
When will that great age recommence And all heaven's hosts in serried flights Circle again in sudden immanence About the earth and fill its days and nights With lights and glooms and atmosphere intense?
When will that great age recommence And many heroes come to birth? When will men have again that sense Of great things purposed on our earth And issues toward of great significance?
When will that greater age return And heaven draw near to earth again, And thoughts of cosmic moment burn Across our skies, and it grow plain That mighty projects call to battle stern?
How are we fallen from our high estate Who saw the dawn at Soissons that July Rise upon pandemonium; heard, elate, The trampling of the steeds of destiny, And saw the flashes at the wheels of fate!
How are we fallen on another day Whose life was a perpetual sacrament, Supping with gods, and kneeling down to pray In cataclysm when the world was rent, As we strode shouting where the lightnings play!
​O Marshal of the myriad souls of men, O Marshal of the squadrons of the stars, Lead us out to Thy battles once again, To marches and to sufferings and scars, Beyond the seas, beyond the sunset-bars, Out where the air is pure and dreams remain.
O Soldier, Friend of soldiers, understand! Call us out from the peril of our sloth, The cheapening of our faiths. Once more, command! And we shall rise again, repugnant, wroth From these dark ways, to march o'er sea and land
Again to hear the trumpets of the slain, Again to see the flares float o'er the steep, To see the angel legions swarm again And on before our glorying columns sweep Down lists that lead beyond earth's sodden plain.