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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SUB DIVO, by                    
First Line: Do ye hear them, hear them ever
Last Line: God himself is on the way.
Subject(s): Marching & Marches


I

Do ye hear them, hear them ever
Marching through the glimmering fields?
Regiments, battalions, armies—
See the flash upon their shields!
Bright worlds, white worlds, myriad myriads,
Crowding onward, marching by,
With the banners of their vanguard
Flaring in the northern sky.
Perfect order and precision,
None too late and none too soon,
With no false note in the music,
Not a footstep out of tune;
World with world, and all together,
Stepping solemnly and slow
In the silent midnight; marching,
Down the long, long road they go.
Wherefore marching? By whose summons
Comes this vast, awful array?
Bow your heads, earth's kings and warriors:
It is God upon the way!

II

And the mountains, they are marching,
Underneath their ponderous load,
Stepping to the selfsame music
Down the selfsame endless road;
All the peaks on far horizons,
With the crimson plumes of dawn
Waving o'er their solemn faces,
Steadily go marching on.
When the silent spirit listens,
And the voice no longer speaks,
You shall hear the tramping mountains,
Hear the footfall of the peaks.
Seem they always in their places
Just to stand, and not to fare?
Look to-morrow—some to-morrow—
Look, and they will not be there!
Mountains, prairies, rivers, oceans,
Through the night and through the day,
Swell the column moving onward:
Lo, 'tis God upon the way.

III

Life is marching; far out yonder,
To the border of the sky,
And beyond it, in the shadow,
Where the voiceless ages lie,
There are faces, human faces—
Who can count them?—everywhere
Faces, millions upon millions,
Thick as snowflakes in the air;
One vast cloud of silent faces,
Covering the mighty plain;
Marching forward, slowly forward—
And they do not march in vain!
Wrongs, oppressions, dungeons, gallows—
These are things they leave behind;
Cries of pain and guilt and falsehood
Die away upon the wind.
From the midnight, through the twilight,
Toward the larger light of day,
Mighty hosts are marching, marching:
This is God upon the way.

IV

What the goal and why the method?
Let him answer it who can:
When your armies march to conquest,
Does the leader tell his plan?
What is surer of deliverance
From the realm of moth and rust
Than the golden dreams we cherish
And the heart's unfaltering trust?
Somewhere there are bugles blowing—
Blowing welcome—far ahead;
There are signals flying somewhere
By the path your feet must tread;
And a golden whisper passes,
With its watchword for the whole,
Through the wide eternal spaces,
And that watchword is—"The soul!"
Know, then, that the endless column
None can either turn or stay,
For with all his hosts forever
God Himself is on the way.





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