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Robert Laurence Binyon - Mid Atlantic
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If this were all!--A dream of dread
 Ran through me; I watched the waves that fled
 Pale--crested out of hollows black,
 The hungry lift of helpless waves,
 A million million tossing graves,
 A wilderness without a track
 Beneath the barren moon:
 If this were all!
 The stars of night remotely strewn
 Looked on that restless heave and fall.
 I seemed with them to watch this old
 Bright planet through the ages rolled,
 Self--tortured, burning splendours vain,
 And fevered with its greeds insane,
 And with the blood of peoples red;
 I watched it, grown an ember cold,
 Join in the dancing of the dead.

 The chilly half--moon sank; the sound
 Of naked surges roared around,
 And through my heart the darkness poured
 Surges as of a sea unshored.
 O somewhere far and lost from light
 Blind Europe battled in the night!
 Then sudden through the darkness came
 The vision of a child,
 A child with feet as light as flame
 Who ran across the bitter waves,
 Across the tumbling of the graves--
 With arms stretched out he smiled.
 I drank the wine of life again,
 I breathed among my brother men,
 I felt the human fire.
 I knew that I must serve the will
 Of beauty and love and wisdom still;
 Though all my hopes were overthrown,
 Though universes turned to stone,
 I have my being in this alone
 And die in that desire.
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