Affirmation

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Affirmation

Poem

The Voyage of Life: Manhood, by Thomas Cole, 1842, oil on canvas

Away, away now Defiler for the hour is near
Of a better dawn and the divine empire,
For the race that through long centuries carried
Its sacred flame from malignant eyes,
Deep in its occult bosom veiled by tears,
A new road our feet are now set upon,
Not thy sword of pestilence nor thy doubt,
Shall shadow our trail now painted
By the fine clear rays of this new sun;
Thy minion fear too forthwith remove,
His method of imagined doom must begone,
From our daily litanies and sacrificial fires;
These Her sons stir awake to the call,
Her remembered edicts stirs their memory,
Their nerves recollect old formidable mights,
Courage seethes, a pent-up serpent in hearts,
Breath as fierce bellows in god’s foundry,
They wake to don their god-like mantle,
By a fresh labour to recast the world
Into some brighter image She fashions
By the mystic vision She nurses for them.
Flee now Defiler to the nether deeps,
Be heard no more by the soul that sees.