Escaping from the enemy’s hand
Into the enemy’s vast domain,
I sought by many a devious path,
Having got in, to get out again.
The endless trap lay everywhere,
And all the roads ran in a maze
Hither and thither, hke a web
To catch the careless days.
The great farmhouses sunk in time
Rose up out of another land;—
Here only the empty harvest-home
Where Caliban waved his wand.
There was no promise in the bud,
No comfort in the blossoming tree
The waving yellow harvests were
Worse than sterility.
Yet all seemed true. The family group
Still gathered round the dying hearth,
The old men droned the ancient saws,
And the young mother still gave birth.
But this I saw there. In the church
In rows the stabled horses stood,
And the cottar’s threshold stone
Was mired with earth and blood.
And whenI reached the line between
The Occupied and Unoccupied,
It was as hard as death to cross,
Yet no change on the other side.
All false, all one. The enemy
These days was scarcely visible;
Only his work was everywhere,
Ill work contrived so well
That he could smile and turn his back,
Let brute indifference overawe
The longing flesh and leaping heart
And grind to dust the ancient law.
A land of bright delusion where
Shape scarce disturbed the emptiness
Yet troubled the sight that strove to make
Of every shape a shape the less.
There the perpetual question ran,
What is escape? and What is flight?
Like dialogue in a dismal dream
Where right is wrong and wrong is right.
But at the very frontier line,
Beyond the region of desire,
There runs a wall of towering flame:
The battle is there of blood and fire.
I must pass through that fiery wall,
Emerge into the battle place,
And there at last, lifting my eyes,
I’ll see the enemy’s face.