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Title: The Dawn Of Peace
Author: Alfred Noyes [
More Titles by Noyes]
Yes--"on our brows we feel the breath
Of dawn," though in the night we wait!
An arrow is in the heart of Death,
A God is at the doors of Fate!
The spirit that moved upon the Deep
Is moving through the minds of men:
The nations feel it in their sleep,
A change has touched their dreams again.
Voices, confused, and faint, arise,
Troubling their hearts from East and West.
A doubtful light is in their skies,
A gleam that will not let them rest:
The dawn, the dawn is on the wing,
The stir of change on every side,
Unsignalled as the approach of Spring,
Invincible as the hawthorn-tide.
Have ye not heard it, far and nigh,
The voice of France across the dark,
And all the Atlantic with one cry
Beating the shores of Europe?--hark!
Then--if ye will--uplift your word
Of cynic wisdom! Once again
Tell us He came to bring a sword,
Tell us He lived and died in vain.
Say that we dream! Our dreams have woven
Truths that out-face the burning sun:
The lightnings, that we dreamed, have cloven
Time, space, and linked all lands in one!
Dreams! But their swift celestial fingers
Have knit the world with threads of steel,
Till no remotest island lingers
Beyond the world's one Commonweal.
Tell us that custom, sloth, and fear
Are strong, then name them "common-sense"!
Tell us that greed rules everywhere,
Then dub the lie "experience":
Year after year, age after age,
Has handed down, thro' fool and child,
For earth's divinest heritage
The dreams whereon old wisdom smiled.
Dreams are they? But ye cannot stay them,
Or thrust the dawn back for one hour!
Truth, Love, and Justice, if ye slay them,
Return with more than earthly power:
Strive, if ye will, to seal the fountains
That send the Spring thro' leaf and spray:
Drive back the sun from the Eastern mountains,
Then--bid this mightier movement stay.
It is the Dawn of Peace! The nations
From East to West have heard a cry,--
"Through all earth's blood-red generations
By hate and slaughter climbed thus high,
Here--on this height--still to aspire,
One only path remains untrod,
One path of love and peace climbs higher!
Make straight that highway for our God."
[The end]
Alfred Noyes's poem: Dawn Of Peace
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