In The Time Of War And Tumults

O Lord Almighty, Thou whose hands
    Despair and victory give;
In whom, though tyrants tread their lands,
    The souls of nations live;

Thou wilt not turn Thy face away
    From those who work Thy will,
But send Thy peace on hearts that pray,
    And guard Thy people still.

Remember not the days of shame,
    The hands with rapine dyed,
The wavering will, the baser aim,
    The brute material pride:

Remember, Lord, the years of faith,
    The spirits humbly brave,
The strength that died defying death,
    The love that loved the slave:

The race that strove to rule Thine earth
    With equal laws unbought: .
Who bore for Truth the pangs of birth,
    And brake the bonds of Though...

        I saw a city filled with lust and shame,
        Where men, like wolves, slunk through the grim half-light;
        And sudden, in the midst of it, there came
        One who spoke boldly for the cause of Right.

        And speaking, fell before that brutish race
        Like some poor wren that shrieking eagles tear,
        While brute Dishonour, with her bloodless face
        Stood by and smote his lips that moved in prayer.

        "Speak not of God!    In centuries that word
        Hath not been uttered!    Our own king are we."
        And God stretched forth his finger as He heard
        And o'er it cast a thousand leagues of sea.

By the Nile, the sacred river,
I can see the captive hordes
Strain beneath the lash and quiver
At the long papyrus cords,
While in granite rapt and solemn,
Rising over roof and column,
Amen-hotep dreams, or Ramses,
Lord of Lords.

I can hear the trumpets waken
For a victory old and far -
Carchemish or Kadesh taken -
I can see the conqueror's car
Bearing down some Hittite valley,
Where the bowmen break and sally,
Sargina or Esarhaddon,
Grim with war!

From the mountain streams that sweeten
Indus, to the Spanish foam,
I can feel the broad earth beaten
By the serried tramp of Rome;
Through whatever foes environ
Onward with the might of iron -
Veni, vidi; veni, vici -
Crashing home!

I can see the kings grow p...

For all we have and are,
For all our children's fate,
Stand up and take the war.
The Hun is at the gate!
Our world has passed away,
In wantonness o'erthrown.
There is nothing left to-day
But steel and fire and stone!
Though all we knew depart,
The old Commandments stand:
"In courage keep your heart,
In strength lift up your hand."

Once more we hear the word
That sickened earth of old:
"No law except the Sword
Unsheathed and uncontrolled."
Once more it knits mankind,
Once more the nations go
To meet and break and bind
A crazed and driven foe.

Comfort, content, delight,
The ages' slow-bought gain,
They shrivelled in a night.
Only ourselves remain
To face the naked days
In silent fortitude,
Through per...

We are the army stevedores, lusty and virile and strong,
We are given the hardest work of the war, and the hours are long.
We handle the heavy boxes, and shovel the dirty coal;
While soldiers and sailors work in the light, we burrow below like a mole.
But somebody has to do this work, or the soldiers could not fight!
And whatever work is given a man, is good if he does it right.

We are the army stevedores, and we are volunteers.
We did not wait for the draft to come, to put aside our fears;
We flung them away on the winds of fate, at the very first call of our land,
And each of us offered a willing heart and the strength of a brawny hand.
We are the army stevedores, and work as we must and may,
The cross of honour will never be ours to proudly wear away.

But the men a...

Youth that trafficked long with Death,
And to second life returns,
Squanders little time or breath
On his fellow man's concerns.
Earned peace is all he asks
To fulfill his broken tasks.

Yet, if he find war at home
(Waspish and importunate),
He hath means to overcome
Any warrior at his gate;
For the past he buried brings
Back unburiable things.

Nights that he lay out to spy,
Whence and when the raid might start;
Or prepared in secrecy
Sudden blows to break its heart,
All the lore of No-Man's Land
Steels his soul and arms his hand.

So, if conflict vex his life
Where he thought all conflict done,
He, resuming ancient strife,
Springs his mine or trains his gun;
And, in mirth more dread than wrath,
Wipes the nuis...

Silent, the Lord of the world
Eyes from the heavenly height,
Girt by his far-shining train,
Us, who with banners unfurl’d
Fight life’s many-chanc’d fight
Madly below, in the plain.

Then saith the Lord to his own:
‘See ye the battle below?
Turmoil of death and of birth!
Too long let we them groan.
Haste, arise ye, and go;
Carry my peace upon earth.’

Gladly they rise at his call;
Gladly they take his command;
Gladly descend to the plain.
Alas! How few of them all,
Those willing servants, shall stand
In their Master’s presence again!

Some in the tumult are lost
Baffled, bewilder’d, they stray.
Some as prisoners draw breath.
Others, the bravest, are cross’d,
On the height of their bold-follow’d way,
By the swift...

The season of the rose and peace is past:
It could not last.
There's heartbreak in the hills and stormy sighs
Of sorrow in the rain-lashed plains and skies,
While Earth regards, aghast,
The last red leaf that flies.

The world is cringing in the darkness where
War left his lair,
And everything takes on a lupine look,
Baring gaunt teeth at every peaceful nook,
And shaking torrent hair
At every little brook.

Cancers of ulcerous flame his eyes, and hark!
There in the dark
The ponderous stir of metal, iron feet;
And with it, heard around the world, the beat
Of Battle; sounds that mark
His heart's advance, retreat.

With shrapnel pipes he goes his monstrous ways;
And, screeching, plays
The hell-born music Havoc dances to;
An...

    War
    I abhor,
    And yet how sweet
    The sound along the marching street
    Of drum and fife, and I forget
    Wet eyes of widows, and forget
    Broken old mothers, and the whole
    Dark butchery without a soul.

    Without a soul - save this bright drink
    Of heady music, sweet as hell;
    And even my peace-abiding feet
    Go marching with the marching street,
    For yonder, yonder goes the fife,
    And what care I for human life!
    The tears fill my astonished eyes
    And my full heart is like to break,
    And yet 'tis all embannered lies,
    A dream those little drummers make.

    O it is wickedness to clothe
    Yon hideous grinning thing that stalks
    Hidden in music, like a queen
    That in ...

All hail the dawn of a new day breaking,
When a strong-armed nation shall take away
The weary burdens from backs that are aching
With maximum labour and minimum pay;
When no man is honoured who hoards his millions;
When no man feasts on another's toil;
And God's poor suffering, striving billions
Shall share His riches of sun and soil.

There is gold for all in the earth's broad bosom,
There is food for all in the land's great store;
Enough is provided if rightly divided;
Let each man take what he needs - no more.
Shame on the miser with unused riches,
Who robs the toiler to swell his hoard,
Who beats down the wage of the digger of ditches,
And steals the bread from the poor man's board.

Shame on the owner of mines whose cruel
And selfish measur...

What do they matter, our headlong hates, when we take the toll of our Dead?
Think ye our glory and gain will pay for the torrent of blood we have shed?
By the cheers of our Victory will the heart of the mother be comforted?

If by the Victory all we mean is a broken and brooding foe;
Is the pomp and power of a glitt'ring hour, and a truce for an age or so:
By the clay-cold hand on the broken blade we have smitten a bootless blow!

If by the Triumph we only prove that the sword we sheathe is bright;
That justice and truth and love endure; that freedom's throned on the height;
That the feebler folks shall be unafraid; that Might shall never be Right;

If this be all: by the blood-drenched plains, by the havoc of fire and fear,
By the rending roar of the War of Wars, by the Dea...

(For Jack)


In a little ship and down the bay,
Out to the calling sea,
A young brave lad sailed off today,
To the one great war went he:
The one long war all men must know
Greater than land or gold,
Soul is the prince and flesh the foe
Of a kingdom Christ will hold.

With arms of faith and hope well-wrought
The brave lad went away,
And the voice of Christ fills all his thought,
Under two hands that pray:
The tender love of a mother's hands
That guarded all his years,
Fitted the armor, plate and bands,
And blessed them with her tears.


Older than Rhodes and Ascalon
And the farthest forts of sea,
Is the Master voice that calls him on
From the hills in Galilee:
From hills where Christ in gentle guise
Called...

Ah! What avails the classic bent
And what the cultured word,
Against the undoctored incident
That actually occurred?


And what is Art whereto we press
Through paint and prose and rhyme,
When Nature in her nakedness
Defeats us every time?


It is not learning, grace nor gear,
Nor easy meat and drink,
But bitter pinch of pain and fear
That makes creation think.


When in this world's unpleasing youth
Our godlike race began,
The longest arm, the sharpest tooth,
Gave man control of man;


Till, bruised and bitten to the bone
And taught by pain and fear,
He learned to deal the far-off stone,
And poke the long, safe spear.


So tooth and nail were obsolete
As means against a foe,
Till, ...

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

"The eradication of memories of the Great War. - Socialist Government Organ.

The Socialist Government speaks:

Though all the Dead were all forgot
And razed were every tomb,
The Worm-the Worm that dieth not
Compels Us to our doom.
Though all which once was England stands
Subservient to Our will,
The Dead of whom we washed Our hands,
They have observance still.

We laid no finger to Their load.
We multiplied Their woes.
We used Their dearly-opened road
To traffic with Their foes:
And yet to Them men turn their eyes,
To Them are vows renewed
Of Faith, Obedience, Sacrifice,
Honour and Fortitude!

Which things must perish. But Our hour
Comes not by staves or swords
So much as, subtly, through the power
Of small corrodi...

"There's something in your face, Michael, I've seen it all the day;
There's something quare that wasn't there when first ye wint away. . . ."

"It's just the Army life, mother, the drill, the left and right,
That puts the stiffinin' in yer spine and locks yer jaw up tight. . . ."

"There's something in your eyes, Michael, an' how they stare and stare -
You're lookin' at me now, me boy, as if I wasn't there. . . ."

"It's just the things I've seen, mother, the sights that come and come,
A bit o' broken, bloody pulp that used to be a chum. . . ."

"There's something on your heart, Michael, that makes ye wake at night,
And often when I hear ye moan, I trimble in me fright. . . ."

"It's just a man I killed, mother, a mother's son like me;
It seems he's always hau...

(1914)

When the thunder-shaking German hosts are marching over France -
Lo, the glinting of the bayonet and the quiver of the lance! -
When a rowdy rampant KAISER, stout and mad and middle-aged,
Strips his breast of British Orders just to prove that he's enraged;
    When with fire and shot and pillage
    He destroys each town and village;
When the world is black with warfare, then there's one thing you must do:
Set your teeth like steel, my hearties, and sit tight and see it through.


Oh, it's heavy work is fighting, but our soldiers do it well -
Lo, the booming of the batteries, the clatter of the shell! -
And it's weary work retiring, but they kept a dauntless front,
All our company of heroes who have borne the dreadful brunt.
    They can meet the foe a...

The beating of the guns grows louder.
'Not long, boys, now'.
My heart burns whiter, fearfuller, prouder.
Hurricanes grow
As guns redouble their fire.
Through the shaken periscope peeping,
I glimpse their wire:
Black earth, fountains of earth rise, leaping,
Spouting like shocks of meeting waves,
Death's fountains are playing,
Shells like shrieking birds rush over;
Crash and din rises higher.
A stream of lead raves
Over us from the left ... (we safe under cover!)
Crash! Reverberation! Crash!
Acrid smoke billowing. Flash upon flash.
Black smoke drifting. The German line
Vanishes in confusion, smoke. Cries, and cry
Of our men, 'Gah, yer swine!
Ye're for it', die
In a hurricane of shell.

One cry:
'We're comin' soon! look out!'