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THE CHALLENGE THE SEARCH: HOME? ADVENTURE?
TOUGH SLEDDIN' POLITICAL NINNIEDOM TECHNOLOGY
HISTORY MYSTERY THE ANSWER?
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Always we want a call to arms, alarum to muster,
A clarion call, a suitable polarization, the shiver and rend
Of trumpet and bugle; a secret whistle in the round blue night;
A perception of banner or device to point our action,
Craft thought, throng columns of heroes alike in kin and owning.
Have we not sought on the soft hills of home,
Mantled in pasture and produce for the mills,
In deep timbered dells dank with mould,
Belled in the hollows of the earthen world,
In silted slopes joyous with grasses?
Have we not ranged the vaulting peaks
Where fissures fall precipice on precipice to the plain
And our five-fingered grasp outfling our vision
Chasm by chasm to the arch horizon?
Walled in rock in straits in passes
Have we not strained and pitted in the reddened gale
Reeled and shocked in jags of fire,
And thunder bowling in the rolling troughs
And tempest hurtling in the huddling crags
Withstood the yawning weltering spumy days?
For many a noon northering, many a moon,
We trod between perpetual plains
Of ice alike aloft and low:
Did we not bow and brave and stay
The slicing extinguishing continental snow?
Broadly stand we in the realms of men
Observing and heard in meet and council.
Noble the laying of ministries, state, law,
Endowment of power and wealth, election of the best,
The selfless, to know the common need, and serve.
Thence, whence,
Riding the electron's ephemeral gleam,
Precisely we measure, catalogue, count.
Strange pulses we identify, shadow, leaven,
Entrain to round and service.
We code our dreams on the threads of the universe
And strung with starry beads and giddy temples
We shoot our engines to the limit of things
And find not whispers not thunder
Nor mark, nor beckon
But moondust and silence.
 
We have asked our fathers for their wisdom’s store,
Rattled the prisons of the past
Scanned history's misty shore
And where on promontory, harbour, or bay cast
Have we descried a bleached jaw
Or lantern face from former war
Adventure, or engendering peoples' bounds,
Picked dry the chains, the sword, the crown.

We have shook the skin of the seer's drum
Lay an ear along the parchment; brush
A nerve on wool myths; sound and plumb
Images and ego; from phantom flush
Enchant the green shadows subliminous
Into approximation; in mantric hum
Know one star's breath, a chill of gems,
Float along the thunder flash,
Touch the liquid crystal hush.
 

Always we want a call to arms, a sounding conch,
Streaming passion, steadfastness, faith from the fullness of a horn,
Echoing the labyrinthine ways, dimly retracing dichotomy,
Division and decision, moment of moment, the breaking thread,
The rapture of the yelling blaze, the slow inertial swing
To point the new star, portending passage, oneness, quest.
Decked children of the eastern dawns,
Till red-clothed, blue-armed, golden-gowned,
Branded, sky-wrought, of the known circles,
The power come beneath the hill
And thrill the slinging hyperbolas of thought,
Our standard be the eyes that owe
The total temper of generations, mettle
To bear the elements' siege, the heel
Of overlords, the error's pain; sight
To forecast our ventures; hearts to sing
For action at the action's breath;
Breath to sense the universal still
And trace the whispers of a rallying sound
Feel the shadows on the gathering ground
And know the marches of our widening will.

krm

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