A Vision / Duncan Campbell Scott

   
A Vision

The tenebrous sky
Was founded on lightning,
And there came marching
To a funeral,
A multitude so millioned
That number was unthinkable;
There were massed together
Kings pierced with their sceptres,
Tyrants shod with the points of swords,
And priests each with a live coal
In the palm of his hand,
Learned men
With book-yokes on their necks,
Merchants with gold eyelids;
Each one tortured with his symbol
And an innumerable host
Without sign or distinction;
Each bore a tuft of grass
In his fingers;
The grass was in seed,
And as they walked,
The seed fell where it listed.
There was no sound
As the host marched
To the funeral;
But what was buried
Was far in the Past,
And the host poured up
From the Future.

--
Duncan Campbell Scott
from Beauty and Life,1921 

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Duncan Campbell Scott (by George J. Dance)