A Treasury of War Poetry Part 11

SONNETS WRITTEN IN THE FALL OF 1914

I

Awake, ye nations, slumbering supine, Who round enring the European fray!

Heard ye the trumpet sound? "The Day! the Day!

The last that shall on England's Empire shine!

The Parliament that broke the Right Divine Shall see her realm of reason swept away, And lesser nations shall the sword obey-- The sword o'er all carve the great world's design!"

So on the English Channel boasts the foe On whose imperial brow death's helmet nods.

Look where his hosts o'er b.l.o.o.d.y Belgium go, And mix a nation's past with blazing sods!

A kingdom's waste! a people's homeless woe!

Man's broken Word, and violated G.o.ds!

II

Far fall the day when England's realm shall see The sunset of dominion! Her increase Abolishes the man-dividing seas, And frames the brotherhood on earth to be!

She, in free peoples planting sovereignty, Orbs half the civil world in British peace; And though time dispossess her, and she cease, Rome-like she greatens in man's memory.

Oh, many a crown shall sink in war's turmoil, And many a new republic light the sky, Fleets sweep the ocean, nations till the soil, Genius be born and generations die.

Orient and Occident together toil, Ere such a mighty work man rears on high!

III

Hearken, the feet of the Destroyer tread The wine-press of the nations; fast the blood Pours from the side of Europe; in the flood On the septentrional watershed The rivers of fair France are running red!

England, the mother-aerie of our brood, That on the summit of dominion stood, Shakes in the blast: heaven battles overhead!

Lift up thy head, O Rheims, of ages heir That treasured up in thee their glorious sum; Upon whose brow, prophetically fair, Flamed the great morrow of the world to come; Haunt with thy beauty this volcanic air Ere yet thou close, O Flower of Christendom!

IV

As when the shadow of the sun's eclipse Sweeps on the earth, and spreads a spectral air, As if the universe were dying there, On continent and isle the darkness dips Unwonted gloom, and on the Atlantic slips; So in the night the Belgian cities flare Horizon-wide; the wandering people fare Along the roads, and load the fleeing ships.

And westward borne that planetary sweep Darkening o'er England and her times to be, Already steps upon the ocean-deep!

Watch well, my country, that unearthly sea, Lest when thou thinkest not, and in thy sleep, Unapt for war, that gloom enshadow thee.

V

I pray for peace; yet peace is but a prayer.

How many wars have been in my brief years!

All races and all faiths, both hemispheres, My eyes have seen embattled everywhere The wide earth through; yet do I not despair Of peace, that slowly through far ages nears; Though not to me the golden morn appears, My faith is perfect in time's issue fair.

For man doth build on an eternal scale, And his ideals are framed of hope deferred; The millennium came not; yet Christ did not fail, Though ever unaccomplished is His word; Him Prince of Peace, though unenthroned, we hail, Supreme when in all bosoms He be heard.

VI

This is my faith, and my mind's heritage, Wherein I toil, though in a lonely place, Who yet world-wide survey the human race Unequal from wild nature disengage Body and soul, and life's old strife a.s.suage; Still must abide, till heaven perfect its grace, And love grown wisdom sweeten in man's face, Alike the Christian and the heathen rage.

The tutelary genius of mankind Ripens by slow degrees the final State, That in the soul shall its foundations find And only in victorious love grow great; Patient the heart must be, humble the mind, That doth the greater births of time await!

VII

Whence not unmoved I see the nations form From Dover to the fountains of the Rhine, A hundred leagues, the scarlet battle-line, And by the Vistula great armies swarm, A vaster flood; rather my breast grows warm, Seeing all peoples of the earth combine Under one standard, with one countersign, Grown brothers in the universal storm.

And never through the wide world yet there rang A mightier summons! O Thou who from the side Of Athens and the loins of Casar sprang, Strike, Europe, with half the coming world allied For those ideals for which, since Homer sang, The hosts of thirty centuries have died.

_George Edward Woodberry_

THE WAR FILMS

O living pictures of the dead, O songs without a sound, O fellowship whose phantom tread Hallows a phantom ground-- How in a gleam have these revealed The faith we had not found.

We have sought G.o.d in a cloudy Heaven, We have pa.s.sed by G.o.d on earth: His seven sins and his sorrows seven, His wayworn mood and mirth, Like a ragged cloak have hid from us The secret of his birth.

Brother of men, when now I see The lads go forth in line, Thou knowest my heart is hungry in me As for thy bread and wine; Thou knowest my heart is bowed in me To take their death for mine.

_Henry Newbolt_

THE SEARCHLIGHTS

[Political morality differs from individual morality, because there is no power above the State.--_General von Bernhardt_]

Shadow by shadow, stripped for fight, The lean black cruisers search the sea.

Night-long their level shafts of light Revolve, and find no enemy.

Only they know each leaping wave May hide the lightning, and their grave.

And in the land they guard so well Is there no silent watch to keep?

An age is dying, and the bell Rings midnight on a vaster deep.

But over all its waves, once more The searchlights move, from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e.

And captains that we thought were dead, And dreamers that we thought were dumb, And voices that we thought were fled, Arise, and call us, and we come; And "Search in thine own soul," they cry; "For there, too, lurks thine enemy."