Had she not courage for the fight?
Hath she not courage for the years to come?
Hath she not courage who descends alone--
(How pitifully alone, except for Love!)
Where man's thought even falters that would
follow,
Into the shadowy abyss
(Through vast and murmurous caverns dark with
crowding dread
And terrible with hovering wings),
To battle there with Death?--to battle
There with Death, and wrest from him,
O Conqueror and Mother,
Life!
V
Hath she too long dwelt dream-bound in the world
of love,
Unconscious of the sterner throes,
The more austere, impersonal, wide faith,
The urge that drives Christs to the cross
Not for the love of one beloved,
But for the love of all?
If so, she wakes!
Wakes and demands a share in all man's bolder
destinies,
The high, audacious ventures of the soul
That thinks to scale the bastioned slopes
And strike stark Chaos from his throne.
We still stand in the dawn of time.
Not meanly let us stand nor shaken with low
doubts!
For there beyond the verge and margin of gray cloud
The future thrills with promise
And the skies are tremulous with golden light;--
She too would share those victories,
Comrade, and more than comrade;--
New times, new needs confront us now;
We must evolve new powers
To battle with;--
We must go forward now together,
Or perchance we fail!