Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Whence Comes the Stranger

Joseph Campbell

WHENCE comes this stranger

That with hoarse, lifted throat

Threatens the fields?

Night’s darkness

And the darkness of mystery

Cover him as in a tent

Of two hides.

At twilight

I looked through the windows of my body,

And, lo!

The sheaves scattered.

And the rooted trees uptorn.

His feet are flails of iron:

What he has threshed

Only the birds of the air will gather.

Bedstraw and branch

Will lie, and rot,

And dig unseen graves.

The wind blows where it wills:

(The Gift of Heaven wrote it in Patmos).

I hear the sound thereof,

But cannot tell whence it comes,

Or whither it will go.

War rides, without thought,

On a pale horse

Through quiet places.

His banners are smoking torches;

His trumpets blow horribly.

He reaps a red harvest,

But not with the crooks of sickles.

The swaths fall slowly,

And the wings of vultures shadow them.

Love is a lamb, for weakness;

Kin a dove, for sorrow;

Peace the silence of a song.

He thunders,

And the suckling’s cry

Is not heard:

He casts his lightning,

And flame breaks from the roofbeam:

He shakes the earth,

And the stones of the altar

Are dust.

At dawn

I looked through the windows of my spirit,

And, lo!

A sower had passed,

Sowing.

For my thoughts

Are not your thoughts,

Neither are your ways

My ways,

Saith the Lord.