A Treasury of War Poetry Part 7

What is the price of that dead man they brought me?

For other dead men do not look the same.

How should I pay for one poor graven steeple Whereon you shattered what you shall not know?

How should I pay you, miserable people?

How should I pay you everything you owe?

Unhappy, can I give you back your honour?

Though I forgave, would any man forget?

While all the great green land has trampled on her The treason and terror of the night we met.

Not any more in vengeance or in pardon An old wife bargains for a bean that's hers.

You have no word to break: no heart to harden.

Ride on and prosper. You have lost your spurs.

_Gilbert Keith Chesterton_

RUSSIA--AMERICA

A wind in the world! The dark departs; The chains now rust that crushed men's flesh and bones, Feet tread no more the mildewed prison stones, And slavery is lifted from your hearts.

A wind in the world! O Company Of darkened Russia, watching long in vain, Now shall you see the cloud of Russia's pain Go shrinking out across a summer sky.

A wind in the world! Our G.o.d shall be In all the future left, no kingly doll Decked out with dreadful sceptre, steel, and stole, But walk the earth--a man, in Charity.

A wind in the world! And doubts are blown To dust along, and the old stars come forth-- Stars of a creed to Pilgrim Fathers worth A field of broken spears and flowers strown.

A wind in the world! Now truancy From the true self is ended; to her part Steadfast again she moves, and from her heart A great America cries: Death to Tyranny!

A wind in the world! And we have come Together, sea by sea; in all the lands Vision doth move at last, and Freedom stands With brightened wings, and smiles and beckons home!

_John Galsworthy_

TO RUSSIA NEW AND FREE

Land of the Martyrs--of the martyred dead And martyred living--now of n.o.ble fame!

Long wert thou saddest of the nations, wed To Sorrow as the fire to the flame, Not yet relentless History had writ of Teuton shame.

Thou knewest all the gloom of hope deferred.

'Twixt G.o.d and Russia wrong had built such bar Each by the other could no more be heard.

Seen through the cloud, the child's familiar star, That once made Heaven near, had made it seem more far.

Land of the Breaking Dawn! No more look back To that long night that nevermore can be: The sunless dungeon and the exile's track.

To the world's dreams of terror let it flee.

To gentle April cruel March is now antiquity.

Yet--of the Past one sacred relic save: That boundary-post 'twixt Russia and Despair,-- Set where the dead might look upon his grave,-- Kissed by him with his last-breathed Russian air.

Keep it to witness to the world what heroes still may dare.

Land of New Hope, no more the minor key, No more the songs of exile long and lone; Thy tears henceforth be tears of memory.

Sing, with the joy the joyless would have known Who for this visioned happiness so gladly gave their own.

Land of the warm heart and the friendly hand, Strike the free chord; no more the muted strings!

Forever let the equal record stand-- A thousand winters for this Spring of Springs, That to a warring world, through thee, millennial longing brings.

On thy white tablets, cleansed of royal stain, What message to the future mayst thou write!-- The People's Law, the bulwark of their reign, And vigilant Liberty, of ancient might, And Brotherhood, that can alone lead to the loftiest height.

Take, then, our hearts' rejoicing overflow, Thou new-born daughter of Democracy, Whose coming sets the expectant earth aglow.

Soon the glad skies thy proud new flag shall see, And hear thy chanted hymns of hope for Russia new and free.

_Robert Underwood Johnson_

_April, 1917_

ITALY IN ARMS

Of all my dreams by night and day, One dream will evermore return, The dream of Italy in May; The sky a br.i.m.m.i.n.g azure urn Where lights of amber brood and burn; The doves about San Marco's square, The swimming Campanile tower, The giants, hammering out the hour, The palaces, the bright lagoons, The gondolas gliding here and there Upon the tide that sways and swoons.

The domes of San Antonio, Where Padua 'mid her mulberry-trees Reclines; Adige's crescent flow Beneath Verona's balconies; Rich Florence of the Medicis; Sienna's starlike streets that climb From hill to hill; a.s.sisi well Remembering the holy spell Of rapt St. Francis; with her crown Of battlements, embossed by time, Stern old Perugia looking down.

Then, mother of great empires, Rome, City of the majestic past, That o'er far leagues of alien foam The shadows of her eagles cast, Imperious still; impending, vast,

The Colosseum's curving line; Pillar and arch and colonnade; St. Peter's consecrated shade, And Hadrian's tomb where Tiber strays; The ruins on the Palatine With all their memories of dead days.

And Naples, with her sapphire arc Of bay, her perfect sweep of sh.o.r.e; Above her, like a demon stark, The dark fire-mountain evermore Looming portentous, as of yore; Fair Capri with her cliffs and caves; Salerno drowsing 'mid her vines And olives, and the shattered shrines Of Paestum where the gray ghosts tread, And where the wilding rose still waves As when by Greek girls garlanded.

But hark! What sound the ear dismays, Mine Italy, mine Italy?

Thou that wert wrapt in peace, the haze Of loveliness spread over thee!

Yet since the grapple needs must be, I who have wandered in the night With Dante, Petrarch's Laura known, Seen Vallombrosa's groves breeze-blown, Met Angelo and Raffael, Against iconoclastic might In this grim hour must wish thee well!

_Clinton Scollard_

ON THE ITALIAN FRONT, MCMXVI