r purple tents
In Rome, leaned with a mother's fears
In Bethlehem to nurse a son of God upon her breast
And learned the tender loneliness of tears,
Awhile had hid in Europe, sad
In the shadow of magnificence,
Brooding, finding no rest,
And then of a sudden she had run forth from her hiding-place,
Rejoicing, desperate, intense
Against her enemy, a rod
Of fire in her hand, her tresses crowned
With liberty, her purpose bold and bound
That every son should be a son of God.
And then she wept for France.... But once more clad
In stars, she beckons to America, the land
Of hope. Behold her stand
With her bright finger scorning armaments
And on her lips the unconquerable common sense
Of love calling the world to challenge and confound
The empty idols of her enemy!
... Comforter of experience,
Enlightener of old events,
Beauty forever dares to widen and retrace
Her way, singing the marches of democracy,
Carrying banners of the time to be,
Calling companions to her high command.

There is a banner, Celia, in your hand!

Though sons, whose fathers bled
For freedom, struggle now instead
With heavier weapons and with weary-waking head
For bread;
Though sons, whose fathers fought in other ages
For fame, bear in their hearts today the scar
Of entering where the laborer sleeps
And rousing him with masterly inquiry where he keeps
His wages:
Though all the cunning coil of trade appear a baser thing
Than battles are,
O trace through time the orbit of this troubled star!
... See, from afar off, how the valiant few
Of old, each with a helmet on his head,
Practiced their inconclusive feud
Upon no battlefield of unfeeling dew--
But on the prostrate stillness of the multitude!
Even their knightliest prowess they must rear,
Tamerlane, Alexander, Arthur, every king,
Upon the common clay from which they spring.
For see how slaves, on whom war falls, renew
The strength of war and disappear
Year after year
Into the earth--fulfilling it to form and bear
Democracy!
Look nearer now along the modern sky
And watch where every man fastens the electric wing
Upon his foot, that he may leave his little sod
Of ignorance!
And look where, by and by,
Taking his high inheritance,
He knows himself and other men as the winged self of God!

The times are gone when only few were fit
To view with open vision the su