War

Once more, dear friends, you meet beneath
A clouded sky
Not yet the sword has found its sheath,
And on the sweet spring airs the breath
Of war floats by.

Yet trouble springs not from the ground,
Nor pain from chance;
The Eternal order circles round,
And wave and storm find mete and bound
In Providence.

Full long our feet the flowery ways
Of peace have trod,
Content with creed and garb and phrase:
A harder path in earlier days
Led up to God.

Too cheaply truths, once purchased dear,
Are made our own;
Too long the world has smiled to hear
Our boast of full corn in the ear
By others sown;

To see us stir the martyr fires
Of long ago,
And wrap our satisfied desires
In the singed mantles that our sires
H...

No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain
Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.
Of course they're "longing to go out again," -
These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk,
They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed
Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died, -
Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud
Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride ...
Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;
Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.

CRAIGLOCKART,
    Oct. 1917.

I

Victors, living, with laureled brow,
And you that sleep beneath the sward!
Your song was poured from cannon throats:
It rang in deep-tongued bugle-notes:
Your triumph came; you won your crown,
The grandeur of a world's renown.
        But, in our later lays,
        Full freighted with your praise,
Fair memory harbors those whose lives, laid down
    In gallant faith and generous heat,
        Gained only sharp defeat.
All are at peace, who once so fiercely warred:
Brother and brother, now, we chant a common chord.


II

    For, if we say God wills,
    Shall we then idly deny Him
    Care of each host in the fight?
    His thunder was here in the hills
    When the guns were loud in July;
    And the flash of the mu...

I.

Death's Eloquence.


When I shall go
Into the narrow home that leaves
No room for wringing of the hands and hair,
And feel the pressing of the walls which bear
The heavy sod upon my heart that grieves,
(As the weird earth rolls on),
Then I shall know
What is the power of destiny. But still,
Still while my life, however sad, be mine,
I war with memory, striving to divine
Phantom to-morrows, to outrun the past;
For yet the tears of final, absolute ill
And ruinous knowledge of my fate I shun.
Even as the frail, instinctive weed
Tries, through unending shade, to reach at last
A shining, mellowing, rapture-giving sun;
So in the deed of breathing joy's warm breath,
Fain to succeed,
I, too, in colorless longings, hope til...

I dreamed a Voice, of one God-authorised,
Cried loudly thro' the world, 'Disarm!    Disarm!'
And there was consternation in the camps;
And men who strutted under braid and lace
Beat on their medalled breasts, and wailed, 'Undone!'
The word was echoed from a thousand hills,
And shop and mill, and factory and forge,
Where throve the awful industries of death,
Hushed into silence.    Scrawled upon the doors,
The passer read, 'Peace bids her children starve.'
But foolish women clasped their little sons
And wept for joy, not reasoning like men.

Again the Voice commanded:    'Now go forth
And build a world for Progress and for Peace.
This work has waited since the earth was shaped;
But men were fighting, and they could not toil.
The needs of life outnumber nee...

In the east the morning comes,
Hear the rollin' of the drums
On the hill.
But the heart that beat as they beat
In the battle's raging day heat
Lieth still.
Unto him the night has come,
Though they roll the morning drum.

What is in the bugle's blast?
It is: "Victory at last!
Now for rest."
But, my comrades, come behold him,
Where our colors now enfold him,
And his breast
Bares no more to meet the blade,
But lies covered in the shade.

What a stir there is to-day!
They are laying him away
Where he fell.
There the flag goes draped before him;
Now they pile the grave sod o'er him
With a knell.
And he answers to his name
In the higher ranks of fame.

There's a woman left to mourn
For the child that she ha...

                    In Flanders fields the poppies blow
                    Between the crosses, row on row,
                    That mark our place; and in the sky
                    The larks, still bravely singing, fly
                    Scarce heard amid the guns below.

                    We are the Dead.    Short days ago
                    We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
                    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
                                            In Flanders fields.

                    Take up our quarrel with the foe:
                    To you from failing hands we throw
                    The torch; be yours to hold it high.
                    If ye break faith with us who die
                    We shall not sleep, t...

"I'm going, Billy, old fellow. Hist, lad! Don't make any noise.
There's Boches to beat all creation, the pitch of a bomb away.
I've fixed the note to your collar, you've got to get back to my Boys,
You've got to get back to warn 'em before it's the break of day."

The order came to go forward to a trench-line traced on the map;
I knew the brass-hats had blundered, I knew and I told 'em so;
I knew if I did as they ordered I would tumble into a trap,
And I tried to explain, but the answer came like a pistol: "Go."

Then I thought of the Boys I commanded - I always called them "my Boys" -
The men of my own recruiting, the lads of my countryside;
Tested in many a battle, I knew their sorrows and joys,
And I loved them all like a father, with more than a father's pride.

Departing summer hath assumed
An aspect tenderly illumed,
The gentlest look of spring;
That calls from yonder leafy shade
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling.
No faint and hesitating trill,
Such tribute as to winter chill
The lonely redbreast pays!
Clear, loud, and lively is the din,
From social warblers gathering in
Their harvest of sweet lays.

Nor doth the example fail to cheer
Me, conscious that my leaf is sere,
And yellow on the bough:-
Fall, rosy garlands, from my head!
Ye myrtle wreaths, your fragrance shed
Around a younger brow!

Yet will I temperately rejoice;
Wide is the range, and free the choice
Of undiscordant themes;
Which, haply, kindred souls may prize
Not less than vernal ecstasies,
An...

Written for Lorado Taft's Statue of Black Hawk at Oregon, Illinois



To be given in the manner of the Indian Oration and the Indian War-Cry.


    Hawk of the Rocks,
    Yours is our cause to-day.
    Watching your foes
    Here in our war array,
    Young men we stand,
    Wolves of the West at bay.
            Power, power for war
            Comes from these trees divine;
            Power from the boughs,
            Boughs where the dew-beads shine,
            Power from the cones -
            Yea, from the breath of the pine!

    Power to restore
    All that the white hand mars.
    See the dead east
    Crushed with the iron cars -
    Chimneys black
    Blinding the sun and stars!

    ...

    My country, I the walls, the arches see,
    The columns, statues, and the towers
    Deserted, of our ancestors;
    But, ah, the glory I do not behold,
    The laurel and the sword, that graced
    Our sires of old.
    Now, all unarmed, a naked brow,
    A naked breast dost thou display.
    Ah, me, how many wounds, what stains of blood!
    Oh, what a sight art thou,
    Most beautiful of women! I
    To heaven cry aloud, and to the world:
    "Who hath reduced her to this pass?
    Say, say!" And worst of all, alas,
    See, both her arms in chains are bound!
    With hair dishevelled, and without a veil
    She sits, disconsolate, upon the ground,
    And hides her face between her knees,
    As she bewails her miseries.
    Oh, weep, ...

If kings and kingdoms once distracted be,
The sword of war must try the sovereignty

                    In Flanders fields the poppies grow
                    Between the crosses, row on row
                    That mark our place:    and in the sky
                    The larks still bravely singing, fly
                    Scarce heard amid the guns below.

                    We are the Dead.    Short days ago
                    We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
                    Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
                    In Flanders fields.

                    Take up our quarrel with the foe:
                    To you from failing hands we throw
                    The Torch:    be yours to hold it high!
                    If ye break faith with us who die
                    We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

At last our Fathers saw the Treaty sealed,
Victory unhelmed her broad, majestic brow,
The Sword became a Sickle in the field,
        The war horse drew the plough.

There is a time when men shape for their Land
Its institutions 'mid some tempests' roar,
Just as the waves that thunder on the strand
        Shape out and round the shore.

Then comes a day when institutions turn
And carve the men, or cast them into moulds;
One Era trembles while volcanoes burn,
        Another Age beholds

The hardened lava changed to hills and leas,
With blooming glades and orchards intermixed,
Vineyards which look abroad o'er purple seas,
        And deep foundations fixed.

So, when fell Chaos like a baleful Fate
What we had won seemed bent to snatch ...

And you are the poet, and so you want
Something what is it? a theme, a fancy?
Something or other the Muse won’t grant
To your old poetical necromancy;
Why, one half you poets you can’t deny
Don’t know the Muse when you chance to meet her,
But sit in your attics and mope and sigh
For a faineant goddess to drop from the sky,
When flesh and blood may be standing by
Quite at your service, should you but greet her.

What if I told you my own romance?
Women are poets, if you so take them,
One third poet, the rest what chance
Of man and marriage may choose to make them.
Give me ten minutes before you go,
Here at the window we’ll sit together,
Watching the currents that ebb and flow;
Watching the world as it drifts below
Up the hot Avenue’s dusty glow:<...

Two thousand years had passed since Christ was born,
When suddenly there rose a mighty host
Of women, sweeping to a central goal
As many rivers sweep on to the sea.
They came from mountains, valleys, and from coasts,
And from all lands, all nations, and all ranks,
Speaking all languages, but thinking one.
And that one language - Peace.

    'Listen,' they said,
And straightway was there silence on the earth,
For men were dumb with wonder and surprise.
'Listen, O mighty masters of the world,
And hear the edict of all womankind:
Since Christ His new commandment gave to men,
LOVE ONE ANOTHER, full two thousand years
Have passed away, yet earth is red with blood.
The strong male rulers of the world proclaim
Their weakness, when we ask that war shall ceas...

For oh, when the war will be over
We'll go and we'll look for our dead;
We'll go when the bee's on the clover,
And the plume of the poppy is red:
We'll go when the year's at its gayest,
When meadows are laughing with flow'rs;
And there where the crosses are greyest,
We'll seek for the cross that is ours.

For they cry to us: 'Friends, we are lonely,
A-weary the night and the day;
But come in the blossom-time only,
Come when our graves will be gay:
When daffodils all are a-blowing,
And larks are a-thrilling the skies,
Oh, come with the hearts of you glowing,
And the joy of the Spring in your eyes.

'But never, oh, never come sighing,
For ours was the Splendid Release;
And oh, but 'twas joy in the dying
To know we were winning you Peace!...

(ALEXANDRIA-MARSEILLES)

Out in the blustering darkness, on the deck
A gleam of stars looks down. Long blurs of black,
The lean Destroyers, level with our track,
Plunging and stealing, watch the perilous way
Through backward racing seas and caverns of chill spray.

One sentry by the davits, in the gloom
Stands mute; the boat heaves onward through the night.
Shrouded is every chink of cabined light:
And sluiced by floundering waves that hiss and boom
And crash like guns, the troop-ship shudders ... doom.

Now something at my feet stirs with a sigh;
And slowly growing used to groping dark,
I know that the hurricane-deck, down all its length,
Is heaped and spread with lads in sprawling strength, -
Blanketed soldiers sleeping. In the stark
Danger of...