Word of the Tsar! and the drowse malign is broken; The stone is rolled from the tomb and Poland free, This is the strong evangel. The guns have spoken; And the scribble of flame of the guns is Liberty.
Have you not met her, my lords, a-walk in the garden, Ranging the dawn, even she, the three times dead? Nay! But in bondage, sundered from light and pardon — But now the water is wine, and the marriage read.
Word of the Tsar! My lords, I think of another Crowned with dolour, forbidden the sun abased, Bloodied, unbroken, abiding — Ah! Queen, my Mother, I have prayed the feet of the Judgment of God to haste.
Count me the price in blood that we have not squandered, Spendthrifts of blood from our cradle, wastefully true, Name me the sinister fields where the Wild Geese wandered, Lille and Cremona and Landen and Waterloo.
When the white steel-foam swept on the tidal onset, When the last wave lapsed, and the sea turned back to its sleep, We were there in the waste and the wreckage, Queen of the Sunset!
Paying the price of the dreams that cannot sleep. The altar is set; we uplift again the chalice; The priest is in purple; the bell booms to the sacrifice. The trumpets summon to death, and Ireland rallies —
Tool or free? We have paid, and over-paid, the price. Word of the Tsar! And Russia rises to vision, Poland and Ireland — thus, my lords, was an augured fate. The days draw in, and the ways narrow down to decision —
Will they chaffer, and cheapen, and ruin, or yield to be great?
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