SONG OF THE BANNER AT DAYBREAK

Poet

O A new song, a free song,
Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices
     clearer,
By the wind's voice and that of the drum,
By the banner's voice and child's voice and sea's voice and
     father's voice,
Low on the ground and high in the air,
On the ground where father and child stand,
In the upward air where their eyes turn,
Where the banner at daybreak is flapping.

Words! book-words! what are you?
Words no more, for hearken and see,
My song is there in the open air, and I must sing,
With the banner and pennant a-flapping.

I'll weave the chord and twine in,
Man's desire and babe's desire, I'll twine them in, I'll put in
life,
I'll put the bayonet's flashing point, I'll let bullets and
     slugs whizz,
(As one carrying a symbol and menace far into the
     future,
Crying with trumpet voice, Arouse and beware! Beware and
     arouse!)
I'll pour the verse with streams of blood, full of volition, full
     of joy,
Then loosen, launch forth, to go and compete,
With the banner and pennant a-flapping.

Pennant

Come up here, bard, bard,
Come up here, soul, soul,
Come up here, dear little child,
To fly in the clouds and winds with me, and play with the
     measureless light.

Child

Father what is that in the sky beckoning to me with long
     finger?
And what does it say to me all the while?

Father

Nothing my babe you see in the sky,
And nothing at all to you it says — but look you my babe,
Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the
     money-shops opening,
And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets
     with goods;
These, ah these, how valued and toil'd for these!
How envied by all the earth!

Poet

Fresh and rosy red the sun is mounting high,
On floats the sea in distant blue careering through its
     channels,
On floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward
     land,
The great steady wind from west or west-by-south,
Floating so buoyant with milk-white foam on the waters.

But I am not the sea nor the red sun,
I am not the wind with girlish laughter,
Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind
     which lashes,
Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and
     death,
But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,
Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,
Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings,
And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that
     banner and pennant,
Aloft there flapping and flapping.

Child

O father it is alive — it is full of people — it has children,
O now it seems to me it is talking to its children,
I hear it — it talks to me — O it is wonderful!
O it stretches — it spreads and runs so fast — O my father,
It is so broad it covers the whole sky.