| |
| WAIT a little: do we not wait? | |
| Louis Napoleon is not Fate, | |
| Francis Joseph is not Time; | |
| There ’s One hath swifter feet than crime; | |
| Cannon-parliaments settle naught; | 5 |
| Venice is Austria’s,—whose is Thought? | |
| Minié is good, but, spite of change, | |
| Gutenberg’s gun has the longest range. | |
| Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! | |
| Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! | 10 |
| In the shadow, year out, year in, | |
| The silent headsman waits forever. | |
| |
| Wait, we say: our years are long; | |
| Men are weak, but Man is strong; | |
| Since the stars first curved their rings, | 15 |
| We have looked on many things; | |
| Great wars come and great wars go, | |
| Wolf-tracks light on polar snow; | |
| We shall see him come and gone, | |
| This second-hand Napoleon. | 20 |
| Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! | |
| Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! | |
| In the shadow, year out, year in, | |
| The silent headsman waits forever. | |
| |
| We saw the elder Corsican, | 25 |
| And Clotho muttered as she span, | |
| While crowned lackeys bore the train, | |
| Of the pinchbeck Charlemagne: | |
| “Sister, stint not length of thread! | |
| Sister, stay the scissors dread! | 30 |
| On Saint Helen’s granite bleak, | |
| Hark, the vulture whets his beak!” | |
| Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! | |
| Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! | |
| In the shadow, year out, year in, | 35 |
| The silent headsman waits forever. | |
| |
| The Bonapartes, we know their bees | |
| That wade in honey red to the knees; | |
| Their patent reaper, its sheaves sleep sound | |
| In dreamless garners underground: | 40 |
| We know false glory’s spendthrift race | |
| Pawning nations for feathers and lace; | |
| It may be short, it may be long, | |
| “’T is reckoning-day!” sneers unpaid Wrong. | |
| Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! | 45 |
| Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! | |
| In the shadow, year out, year in, | |
| The silent headsman waits forever. | |
| |
| The cock that wears the eagle’s skin | |
| Can promise what he ne’er could win; | 50 |
| Slavery reaped for fine words sown, | |
| System for all, and rights for none, | |
| Despots atop, a wild clan below, | |
| Such is the Gaul from long ago; | |
| Wash the black from the Ethiop’s face, | 55 |
| Wash the past out of man or race! | |
| Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! | |
| Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! | |
| In the shadow, year out, year in, | |
| The silent headsman waits forever. | 60 |
| |
| ’Neath Gregory’s throne a spider swings, | |
| And snares the people for the kings; | |
| “Luther is dead; old quarrels pass; | |
| The stake’s black scars are healed with grass”; | |
| So dreamers prate; did man ere live | 65 |
| Saw priest or woman yet forgive? | |
| But Luther’s broom is left, and eyes | |
| Peep o’er their creeds to where it lies. | |
| Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! | |
| Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! | 70 |
| In the shadow, year out, year in, | |
| The silent headsman waits forever. | |
| |
| Smooth sails the ship of either realm, | |
| Kaiser and Jesuit at the helm; | |
| We look down the depths, and mark | 75 |
| Silent workers in the dark | |
| Building slow the sharp-tusked reefs, | |
| Old instincts hardening to new beliefs; | |
| Patience a little; learn to wait; | |
| Hours are long on the clock of Fate. | 80 |
| Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! | |
| Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever! | |
| Darkness is strong, and so is Sin, | |
| But only God endures forever! | |
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