Explore "The Marching Morrows" by Bliss Carman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Now gird thee well for courage, / My knight of twenty year, / Against the marching morrows / That fill the world with fear!
The flowers fade before them; / The summer leaves the hill; / Their trumpets range the morning, / And those who hear grow still.
Like pillagers of harvest, / Their fame is far abroad, / As gray remorseless troopers / That plunder and maraud.
The dust is on their corselets; / Their marching fills the world; / With conquest after conquest / Their banners are unfurled.
They overthrow the battles / Of every lord of war, / From world-dominioned cities / Wipe out the names they bore.
Sohrab, Rameses, Roland, / Ramoth, Napoleon, Tyre, / And the Romeward Huns of Attila -- / Alas, for their desire!
By April and by autumn / They perish in their pride, / And still they close and gather / Out of the mountain-side.
The tanned and tameless children / Of the wild elder earth, / With stature of the northlights, / They have the stars for girth.
There's not a hand to stay them, / Of all the hearts that brave; / No captain to undo them, / No cunning to off-stave.
Yet fear thou not! If haply / Thou be the kingly one, / They'll set thee in their vanguard / To lead them round the sun.