The Lion and the Rose by May Sarton Read Free Book Online Page A

done.
    Now he is groomed and cared for like a fighting-cock,
    His blood enriched, his athlete’s nerve refined
    In crucibles of tension to be electric under shock,
    His intellect composed for action and designed
    To map a bomber’s passage to Berlin by stars,
    Precision’s instrument that neither doubts nor fears.
    This can be done in six months. Take a marvelous boy
    And knead him into manhood for destruction’s joy.
    This can be done in six months, but we never tried
    Until we needed the lute-player’s sweet life-blood.
    O the composed mind and the electric nerve
    Were never trained like this to build, to love, to serve.
    Look at him now and swear by every bomb he will release,
    This shall be done. This shall be better done in peace!

UNLUCKY SOLDIER
    This is my friend, the fair Mozartian boy,
    Gangling and gay and sudden as a bee,
    Music his difficult passion and his joy,
    Princely in fire and in humility.
    Before he knew the pattern of his will
    Or recognized his own life, he was given
    To the harsh will of war, impersonal;
    For three years up and down was driven,
    Used and misused, the grace ground down,
    The body hardened and the spirit dulled
    Until rebellion and despair were overthrown—
    And yet not wounded or in danger, not yet killed.
    For three years I have watched him grow
    And sweeten, laughing his way through Hell,
    This so uncelebrated, so inglorious, so
    Unlucky soldier whom many have loved well
    For princely fire, whose gifts were gifts of wonder
    Not death—those meant for living
    The visions and the dreams he must plough under,
    The harvests stolen from him, but forgiving.
    (Not wounded, not yet killed, not yet in danger.)
    If, after all, enduring all, he lives to know his will,
    Disarmed, he will appear a marvelous and potent stranger
    To serve us well whom we have served so ill.

WHO WAKES
    Detroit, June, 1943
    Who wakes now who lay blind with sleep?
    Who starts, bright-eyed with anger from his bed?
    I do. I, the plain citizen. I cannot sleep.
    I hold the torturing fire in my head.
    I, an American, call the dead Negro’s name,
    And in the hot dark of the city night
    I walk the streets alone and sweat with shame.
    Too late to rise, to raise the dead too late.
    This is the harvest. The seeds sown long ago—
    The careless word, sly thought, excusing glance.
    I reap now everything I let pass, let go.
    This is the harvest of my own indifference.
    I, the plain citizen, have grown disorder
    In my own world. It is not what I meant.
    But dreams and images are potent and can murder.
    I stand accused of them. I am not innocent.
    Can I now plant imagination, honesty,
    And love where violence and terror were unbound,
    The images of hope, the dream’s responsibility?
    Those who died here were murdered in my mind.

RETURN TO CHARTRES
    We came to Chartres, riding the green plain,
    The spear of hope, the incorruptible towers,
    The great tree rooted in the heart of France
    Blazing eternally with sacred flowers;
    We came to Chartres, the house without a stain,
    The mastery of passion by belief,
    With all its aspiration held in balance;
    We came to Chartres, the magic spear of grain,
    The spear of wheat forever nourishing,
    The never-wasted stalk, the ever blessing.
    And there we meditated on our tragic age,
    Split at the heart, flowering without a stem,
    For we are barren men haunted by rage
    Who cannot find our hope here though we came,
    Now all the hope we have is human love:
    Passion without belief destroys our love.

TO THE LIVING
    I
    Now we must kill or perish, desolate choice—
    Indifference not hatred brought us to this place.
    There was a time when charity still had a voice.
    There was a time for love’s imaginative face
    And healing touch, for the deep searching eyes
    That may behold the miracles of grace.
    We could have beaten down the dangerous lies
    If we had helped the helpless in their lonely stand,
    And made a real peace, peace where no one dies,
    And never watched the hearts spilt out on