I.

The beast exultant spreads the nostril wide,
Snuffing a sickly hate-enkindling scent;
Proud of his rage, on sudden carnage bent,
He leaps, and flings the helpless guard aside.
Again, again the hills are gapped and dyed,
Again the hearts of waiting women spent.
Is there no cooler pathway to content?
Can we not heal the insanity of pride?

Silence the crackle and thunder of battling guns,
And drive your men to strategy of peace;
Crush ere its birth the hell-begotten crime;
Still there’s a war that no true warrior shuns,
That knows no mercy, looks for no surcease,
But ghastlier battles, victories more sublime.



II.

Envy has slid in silence to its hole,
And Peace is basking where the workers meet,
And fire has purged ...

I

There is no picturesqueness and no glory,
    No halo of romance, in war to-day.
    It is a hideous thing; Time would turn grey
With horror, were he not already hoary
At sight of this vile monster, foul and gory.
    Yet while sweet women perish as they pray,
    And new-born babes are slaughtered, who dare say
'Halt!' till Right pens its 'Finis' to the story!
There is no pathway, but the path through blood,
    Out of the horrors of this holocaust.
Hell has let loose its scalding crimson flood,
    And he who stops to argue now is lost.
Not brooms of creeds, not Pacifistic words
Can stem the tide, but swords - uplifted swords!

II

Yet, after Peace has turned the clean white page
    There shall be sorrow on the earth for years;
 ...

You young friskies who today
Jump and fight in Father's hay
With bows and arrows and wooden spears,
Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers,
Happy though these hours you spend,
Have they warned you how games end?
Boys, from the first time you prod
And thrust with spears of curtain-rod,
From the first time you tear and slash
Your long-bows from the garden ash,
Or fit your shaft with a blue jay feather,
Binding the split tops together,
From that same hour by fate you're bound
As champions of this stony ground,
Loyal and true in everything,
To serve your Army and your King,
Prepared to starve and sweat and die
Under some fierce foreign sky,
If only to keep safe those joys
That belong to British boys,
To keep young Prussians from the soft
Scented...

Often when warring for he wist not what,
An enemy-soldier, passing by one weak,
Has tendered water, wiped the burning cheek,
And cooled the lips so black and clammed and hot;

Then gone his way, and maybe quite forgot
The deed of grace amid the roar and reek;
Yet larger vision than loud arms bespeak
He there has reached, although he has known it not.

For natural mindsight, triumphing in the act
Over the throes of artificial rage,
Has thuswise muffled victory's peal of pride,
Rended to ribands policy's specious page
That deals but with evasion, code, and pact,
And war's apology wholly stultified.

1915.

Athelstan King,
Lord among Earls,
Bracelet-bestower and
Baron of Barons,
He with his brother,
Edmund Atheling,
Gaining a lifelong
Glory in battle,
Slew with the sword-edge
There by Brunanburh,
Brake the shield-wall,
Hew'd the lindenwood,
Hack'd the battleshield,
Sons of Edward with hammer'd brands.

Theirs was a greatness
Got from their Grandsires--
Theirs that so often in
Strife with their enemies
Struck for their hoards and their hearths and their homes.

Bow'd the spoiler,
Bent the Scotsman,
Fell the shipcrews
Doom'd to the death.
All the field with blood of the fighters
Flow'd, from when first the great
Sun-star of morningtide,
Lamp of the Lord God
Lord everlasting,
Glode over earth till...

        'Tis noble for to fight for home,
            But some nations fight to plunder,
        For conquest o'er the world to roam,
            To tear peaceful lands asunder.

        For to give wealth and a great name
            To some aspiring commander,
        Who wishes to acquire great fame
            As a modern Alexander.

        Statesmen and kings a war will wage,
            And many thousands strew the plain,
        Covered with gore in the carnage,
            Where brave and noble men are slain.

        Leaving their families to mourn,
            Now who can soothe the ills of life,
        To them they never shall return,
            No one can now cheer the poor wife.

        Or the sweet little orphans dear

This on the water: on the land a scene
Whose Epic scope is far beyond my power,
For on this spot a People's fate hath been
Decided in an hour.

Long was the conflict waged through weary years
Counted from when the sturdy farmers fell:
Hopes crucified, red trenches, bitter tears,
Made Man another hell!

See pallid women girt in woe and weeds!
See little children gaunt for lack of food!
Behold the catalogue of War's black deeds
        Where evil stands for good!

See slaughtered cattle, never more to roam,
Rot in the fields, while chimneys tall and bare
Tell in dumb pathos how some quiet home
        Lit up the midnight air!

See that burnt crop, yon choked-up sylvan well,
This yeoman slain ye corven in the sun!
My GOD! shreds of a...

I stood, unseen, within a sumptous room,
Where one clothed all in white sat silently.
So sweet his presence that a pure soft light
Rayed from him, and I saw--most wondrous sight!--
The Love of God shrined in the flesh once more,
And glowing softly like a misted sun.
His back was towards me. Had I seen his face
Methought I must have fallen. I was wrong.
The door flung wide. With hasty step
Came one in royal robes and all the pride
And pomp of majesty, and on his head
A helmet with an eagle poised for flight.
He stood amazed at sight of him in white,
His lips apart in haughty questioning.
But no words came. Breathless, he raised his hand
And gave salute as to a mightier lord,
And doffed his helm, and stood. And in his eyes I saw
The reflex glory of his Mast...

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 ...

    Blood, hatred, appetite and apathy,
    The sodden many and the struggling strong,
    Who care not now though for another wrong
    Another myriad innocents should die.
    At candid savagery or oily lie
    We laugh, or, turning, join the noisy throng
    Which buries the dead with gluttony and song.
    Suppose this very evening from on high
    Broke on the world that unexampled flame
    The choir-thronged sky, and Thou, descending, Lord;
    What agony of horror, fear, and shame,
    For those who knew and wearied of Thy word,
    I dare not even think, who am confest
    Idle, malignant, lustful as the rest.

We have outgrown the helmet and cuirass,
The spear, the arrow, and the javelin.
These crude inventions of a cruder age,
When men killed men to show their love of God,
And he who slaughtered most was greatest king.
We have outgrown the need of war!
    Should men
Unite in this one thought, all war would end.

Disarm the world; and let all Nations meet
Like Men, not monsters, when disputes arise.
When crossed opinions tangle into snarls,
Let Courts untie them, and not armies cut.
When State discussions breed dissensions, let
Union and Arbitration supersede
The hell-created implements of War.
Disarm the world! and bid destructive thought
Slip like a serpent from the mortal mind
Down through the marshes of oblivion.    Soon
A race of gods shall rise...

And what of home, how goes it, boys,
While we die here in stench and noise?
"The hill stands up and hedges wind
Over the crest and drop behind;
Here swallows dip and wild things go
On peaceful errands to and fro
Across the sloping meadow floor,
And make no guess at blasting war.
In woods that fledge the round hill-shoulder
Leaves shoot and open, fall and moulder,
And shoot again.    Meadows yet show
Alternate white of drifted snow
And daisies.    Children play at shop,
Warm days, on the flat boulder-top,
With wildflower coinage, and the wares
Are bits of glass and unripe pears.
Crows perch upon the backs of sheep,
The wheat goes yellow:    women reap,
Autumn winds ruffle brook and pond,
Flutter the hedge and fly beyond.
So the first things ...

Who are the Makers of Wars?
The Kings of the earth.

And who are these Kings of the earth?
Only men--not always even men of worth,
But claiming rule by right of birth.

And Wisdom?--does that come by birth?
Nay then--too often the reverse.
Wise father oft has son perverse;
Solomon's son was Israel's curse.

Why suffer things to reason so averse?
It always has been so,
And only now does knowledge grow
To that high point where all men know--
Who would be free must strike the blow.

And how long will man suffer so?
Until his soul of Freedom sings,
And, strengthened by his sufferings,
He breaks the worn-out leading-strings,
And calls to stricter reckonings
Those costliest things--unworthy Kings.

Not all are worthless. ...

At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
In the wild purple of the glowering sun,
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesu, make it stop!

I.
Yonder, with eyes that tears, not distance, dim,
With ears the wide world’s thickness cannot daunt,
We see tumultuous miseries that haunt
The night’s dead watches, hear the battle hymn
Of ruin shrieking through the music grim,
Where the red spectre straddles, long and gaunt,
Spitting across the seas his hideous taunt
At those who nurse at home the unwounded limb.

What shall we say, who, drawing indolent breath,
Mark the quick pant of those who, full of hate,
Drive home the steel or loose the shrieking shell,
Heroes or Huns, who smite the grin of death
And laugh or curse beneath the blows of fate,
Swept madly to the thudding heart of hell?



II.
O peace, be still! Let no drear whirlwind sweep
Our souls about the vault, that groans ...

"A Victory! --a victory!"
Is flashed across the wires;
Speed, speed the news from State to State,
Light up the signal fires!
Let all the bells from all the towers
A joyous peal ring out;
We've gained a glorious victory,
And put the foe to rout!

A mother heard the chiming bells;
Her joy was mixed with pain.
"Pray God," she said, "my gallant boy
Be not among the slain!"
Alas for her! that very hour
Outstretched in death he lay,
The color from his fair, young face
Had scarcely passed away.

His nerveless hand still grasped the sword.
He never more might wield,
His eyes were sealed in dreamless sleep
Upon that bloody field.
The chestnut curls his mother oft
Had stroked in fondest pride,
Neglected hung ia clotted locks,

The heat sticks closely to the gun and to the hand.
It pricks the eyes.    Nothing remained forgotten.
The troops stepped, half drunk, into the fire.
The non-coms stand rigidly in front.
The glaring earth is a dead carousel.
Nothing stirs.    No one drops down.    No streaked sky flies.
Only rarely a hoarse barking tears apart the blue sow
Which lies on the stone barracks.
Now the army leaves me alone.
Who still pays attention to me.    They got used
To my strange civilian eyes long ago.
On maneuvers I am half dreaming,
And as we march I compose poems.

But war comes.    There was peace too long.
No more good times.    Trumpets screech
Deep into your heart.    And all the nights are burning.
You freeze in tents.    You're hot.    You're hungry.
You d...

I.

"I'll tell yer what," said Uncle Zeke, down at the country store,
"I'd been a farmer all my life--fur twenty year or more--
Until one day my noddle here, it got plumb out o' fix,
Er-swellin' with the idy that I's made fur politicks.


II.

"I'd been ter hear them fellers speak, an' rip an' rant an' rave,
When 'lection time's er-comin' on, who tell yer how ter save
Ther kentry frum tarnation ruin, by sendin' only men
That's fit ter draw ther salaries, an' honest--jest like them.


III.

"So listen, boys--yer'll profit by ther story that I tell--
I left ther farm ter 'lectioneer an' run fur constable;
I wouldn't hearken ter my wife--she said I'd lost my wit,
An' as fur holdin' offices--she knowed I wusn't fit.