The Revealer

 (ROOSEVELT)

He turned aside to see the carcase of the lion: and behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion … And the men of the city said unto him, What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?—Judges, 14.



The palms of Mammon have disowned 
The gift of our complacency; 
The bells of ages have intoned 
Again their rhythmic irony; 
And from the shadow, suddenly,
’Mid echoes of decrepit rage, 
The seer of our necessity 
Confronts a Tyrian heritage.
 

Equipped with unobscured intent 
He smiles with lions at the gate,
Acknowledging the compliment 
Like one familiar with his fate; 
The lions, having time to wait, 
Perceive a small cloud in the skies, 
Whereon they look, disconsolate,
With scared, reactionary eyes.
 

A shadow falls upon the land,— 
They sniff, and they are like to roar; 
For they will never understand 
What they have never seen before.

They march in order to the door, 
Not knowing the best thing to seek, 
Nor caring if the gods restore 
The lost composite of the Greek.
 

The shadow fades, the light arrives,
And ills that were concealed are seen; 
The combs of long-defended hives 
Now drip dishonored and unclean; 
No Nazarite or Nazarene 
Compels our questioning to prove
The difference that is between 
Dead lions—or the sweet thereof.
 

But not for lions, live or dead, 
Except as we are all as one, 
Is he the world’s accredited
Revealer of what we have done; 
What You and I and Anderson 
Are still to do is his reward; 
If we go back when he is gone— 
There is an Angel with a Sword.


He cannot close again the doors 
That now are shattered for our sake; 
He cannot answer for the floors 
We crowd on, or for walls that shake; 
He cannot wholly undertake
The cure of our immunity; 
He cannot hold the stars, or make 
Of seven years a century.
 

So Time will give us what we earn 
Who flaunt the handful for the whole,
And leave us all that we may learn 
Who read the surface for the soul; 
And we’ll be steering to the goal, 
For we have said so to our sons: 
When we who ride can pay the toll,
Time humors the far-seeing ones.
 

Down to our nose’s very end 
We see, and are invincible,— 
Too vigilant to comprehend 
The scope of what we cannot sell;
But while we seem to know as well 
As we know dollars, or our skins, 
The Titan may not always tell 
Just where the boundary begins.

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