Part 9

To strange world past the parish line (More strange with sound and sight to-day), Recruited fast at every hedge, The gathering army takes its way.

Commanders? Aye, they trudge ahead,-- Not badge but babe on every breast. The troops? They straggle at her skirt, From tot to crone, in ranks ill-drest.

And uniformed--in rusty best From cedarn chests and linen bags; Ah, rough the roads and chill the winds To sabots split and sudden rags!

Equipment? Aye, ’tis furnished well, This army of the old and young,-- On shoulder bent a bundle small, A doll from little fingers swung!

Almost complete--it only lacks The battle oath and cheer and song; Save infant fret and agèd sigh, Now dumbly marches it along.

Past gaping window, roof and sill It fares to red horizon’s edge, Past blackened furrow, hearth and fane,-- And fast it grows at every hedge!

_Boston News Bureau._ _Bartholomew F. Griffin_

THE BUGLE

Oh calling, and calling, at the rising of the sun, Hark the bugle clearly singing with the swallows widely winging In the morning just begun. “You are going to the flowing of the traffic-roaring street, “To the toiling and turmoiling, and though toil for man be meet, “Is it all, is it all, thus to plod and feed and crawl, “Is there not a thought to stray from your task from day to day? “Ah, December follows May; leaves will fall! “For the glory gone before you, “For the mother-breast bent o’er you, “The good earth that bore you, “I call, I call!”

Oh calling, and calling, as the morning mists unfold, Hark the bugle’s keen upbraiding that true hearts are more than trading And that steel is more than gold. “Is there seeming in your dreaming of an endless golden day? “Ne’er were powers, ne’er were towers, but uncherished would decay. “Follow through, follow through, foaming wake and throbbing screw, “All your fair and broad dominions with the seagull’s waving pinions, “What but swords that did them win once, holds them all? “For the thousand years behind you, “For the slothful cords that bind you, “The future that may find you, “I call, I call!”

Oh calling, and calling, when the twilight stars are born, Hark the bugle’s fierce complaining--“Labor--labor--still sustaining, “Unrequited, laughed to scorn! “Wheels are humming, you are coming to your fire-lit warmth and ease, “Ask the teachers, ask the preachers who declaim of ‘love’ and ‘peace,’ “What to do, what to do, if no more my signal blew “By the Northern ocean-strands, on the scorching desert sands, “Or beneath the tropic lands’ steamy pall? “For your plenteous bin and board, now “For ‘all things in order stored,’ now, “For Right, for the Lord, now, “I call, I call!”

Oh calling, and calling, when the dark is closing down, Hark the bugle clearly crying of the fame beyond all dying, And the laurel, and the crown. “Heroes sworded--splendors hoarded by enshrining centuries, “Life or living--theirs the giving--greater love had none than these! “Can it be, can it be, sons of steel on land and sea, “Song and story weft of war-woof, blood and breed from sires of war-proof, “That ye stand to such a lore proof, one and all? “For the glory gone before you, “For the mother-breast bent o’er you, “The good earth that bore you, “I call, I call!”

_Infantry Journal_ _E. Sutton_

HE WENT FOR A SOLDIER

He marched away with a blithe young score of him With the first volunteers, Clear-eyed and clean and sound to the core of him, Blushing under the cheers. They were fine, new flags that swung a-flying there, Oh, the pretty girls he glimpsed a-crying there, Pelting him with pinks and with roses-- Billy, the Soldier Boy!

Not very clear in the kind young heart of him What the fuss was about, But the flowers and the flags seemed part of him-- The music drowned his doubt. It’s a fine, brave sight they were a-coming there To the gay, bold tune they kept a-drumming there, While the boasting fifes shrilled jauntily-- Billy, the Soldier Boy!

Soon he is one with the blinding smoke of it-- Volley and curse and groan: Then he has done with the knightly joke of it-- It’s rending flesh and bone. There are pain-crazed animals a-shrieking there And a warm blood stench that is a-reeking there; He fights like a rat in a corner-- Billy, the Soldier Boy!

There he lies now, like a ghoulish score of him, Left on the field for dead: The ground all round is smeared with the gore of him-- Even the leaves are red. The Thing that was Billy lies a-dying there, Writhing and a-twisting and a-crying there; A sickening sun grins down on him-- Billy, the Soldier Boy!

Still not quite clear in the poor, wrung heart of him What the fuss was about, See where he lies--or a ghastly part of him-- While life is oozing out: There are loathsome things he sees a-crawling there; There are hoarse-voiced crows he hears a-calling there, Eager for the foul feast spread for them-- Billy, the Soldier Boy!

_How much longer, O lord, shall we bear it all? How many more red years? Story it and glory it and share it all, In seas of blood and tears? They are braggart attitudes we’ve worn so long; They are tinsel platitudes we’ve sworn so long-- We who have turned the Devil’s Grindstone, Borne with the hell called War!_

_Smart Set_ _Ruth Comfort Mitchell_

SIX SONNETS

(August, 1914)

I

TO WILLIAM WATSON IN ENGLAND

Singer of England’s ire across the sea, Your austere voice, electric from the deep, Speaks our own yearning, and our spirits sweep To Europe’s allied honor.--Painfully, Bowed with a planet’s lonely burden, we Held our hot hearts in leash, but now they leap Their ban, like young hounds belling from their keep, To bait the Teuton wolf of tyranny.

What! Would he throw us sops of sugared art And poisoned commerce, snarling: “So! lie still Till I have shown my fangs, and torn the heart Of half the world, and gorged my sanguine fill!”-- Now, England, let him see: Rage as he will, He cannot tear our plighted souls apart.

II

AMERICAN NEUTRALITY

How shall we keep an armed neutrality With our own souls? Our souls belie our lips, That seek to hold our passion in eclipse And hide the wound of our sharp sympathy, Saying: “One’s neighbor differs; he might be Kindled to wrath, were one to wield the whips Of Truth.” Great God! A red Apocalypse Flames on the blinded world: and what do we?

_Peace!_ do we cry? Peace is the godlike plan We love and dedicate our children to; Yet England’s cause is ours: The rights of man, Which little Belgium battles for anew, Shall _we_ recant? No!--Being American, Our souls cannot keep neutral and keep true.

III

PEACE

_Peace!_--But there is no peace. To hug the thought Is but to clasp a lover who thinks lies. Go: look your earnest neighbor in the eyes And read the answer there. Peace is not bought By distance from the fight. Peace must be fought And bled for: ’tis a dream whose horrid price Is haggled for by dread realities; Peace is not paid till dreamers are distraught.

Would we not close our ears against these ills, Urging our hearts: “Be calm! America Is called soon to rebuild a world.”--But ah! How shall we nobly build with neutral wills? Can we be calm while Belgian anguish thrills? Or would we crown with peace--Caligula?

IV

WILSON

Patience--but peace of heart we cannot choose; Nor would he wish us cravenly to keep Aloof in soul, who--large in statesmanship And justice--sent our ships to Vera Cruz. Patience must wring our hearts, while we refuse To launch our country on that crimson deep Which breaks the dikes of Europe, but we sleep Watchful, still waiting by the awful fuse.

Wisdom he counsels, and he counsels well Whose patient fortitude against the fret And sneer of time has stood inviolable We love his goodness and will not forget. With him we pause beside the mouth of hell:-- The wolf of Europe has not triumphed yet.

V

KRUPPISM

Crowned on the twilight battlefield, there bends A crooked iron dwarf, and delves for gold, Chuckling: “One hundred thousand gatlings--sold!” And the moon rises, and a moaning rends The mangled living, and the dead distends, And a child cowers on the chartless wold, Where, searching in his safety vault of mold, The kobold kaiser cuts his dividends.

We, who still wage his battles, are his thralls, And dying do him homage: yea, and give Daily our living souls to be enticed Into his power. So long as on war’s walls We build engines of death that he may live, So long shall we serve Krupp instead of Christ.

VI

THE REAL GERMANY

Bismarck--or rapt Beethoven with his dreams: Ah, which was blind? Or which bespoke his race?-- That breed which nurtured Heine’s haunting grace, And Goethe, mastering Olympic themes Of meditation, Mozart’s golden gleams, And Leibnitz charting realms of time and space, Great-hearted Schiller, and that fairy brace Of brothers who first trailed the goblin streams.

Bismarck for these builded an iron tomb, And clanged the door, and turned a kaiser’s key; And simple folk that once danced merrily Their May-ring rites, march now in roaring gloom Toward that renascent dawn when the black womb Of buried guns gives birth to Germany.

_Boston Transcript_ _Percy MacKaye_

LITANY OF NATIONS

The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters ... and shall be chased before the wind.--_Isaiah._

GREECE

Aeons of old were wandering down the seas, When Homer sang at Chios--and the sweet Tranquillity of marching silences Was broken at my feet.

_Great dawns have shown the way_ _When we have wandered._ _God, in the battle sway,_ _What have we squandered?_

ITALY

Avid and Roman born in soul and sense, Master of all else but myself was I, When, bound by silken cords of indolence, I saw the world go by.

FRANCE

Ravaging, roystering and repenting--save In story and the regions of romance, Rises the moon on whom more mad and brave, Or beautiful than France?

GERMANY

Once German arms and German armies hurled Thunders on Rome. Than mine no readier hand Would wake the violin and woo the world, Were it a fairyland.

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

Mine is a house divided but upheld By the sheer force of many hemming powers. Ages, like forests, have been hewn and felled To build my crumbling towers.

RUSSIA

Gray winters flourish and old empires fail; And still the starry watchmen sally forth As wardens, with me, of the frozen grail And ramparts of the north.

BALKAN STATES

Stabbing the skies for stars and air in which To bask awhile and breathe--shall we remain Simply the little brothers of the rich? God! have we fought in vain?

SPAIN

Strong was my soul in war and wise in peace. On whom else was the Moslem vanguard hurled? O but for me had any Genoese Sailed and brought back a world?

SWITZERLAND

High noons and sunsets pass while I repeat The world-old secret of the endless quest; And with the nations ageing at my feet, I overlook the west.

GREAT BRITAIN

Flecking the seas where war and tempest brew, And biding till the gonfalons are furled, My British sails have dared and driven through Thunders that shook the world.

AMERICA

Westward the tide of empire ebbs and flows: And westward where the new-world torches rise And rout the night, the Great Day dawning glows And kindles in my eyes.

JAPAN

Amid the warring peoples I that slept And dreamt of wide dominion--confident, Ambitious, urging, conquering--have stept Out from the orient.

CHINA

Glory and power for ages had been mine, Until upon me fell a sudden night, Such as makes beacon-star republics shine: And my eyes saw the light.

TURKEY

In infidel debate on whence and why, They hiss my God, and know not whether hale And wise, or worn and withering am I, Behind the crimson veil.

_Great dawns have shown the way When we have wandered. God, in the battle sway, What have we squandered?_

_The International_ _William Griffith_

TO THE NECROPHILE

(_After reading of the affectionate desire of Germany “to get closer to France,” expressed by the German Secretary of State to the British Ambassador at Berlin, as published in the British White Papers._)

With love are you gone mad, O lover of France, That you should be embracing with your arms Her gory body for the gore that warms Only a monster in his dalliance? Alas! she is alive with her alarms, Unwilling yet for the enraged romance. Assault her sacredness of Paris, lance Her flank with such a wound as has its charms.

For you who want for your obscene amours The body of a soul that is not yours, For you who want a wound to enter by, For you who want a corpse upon your heart. Coupling with France if France would only die, Not yours the human vow: “_Till death us part!_”

_The Trend_ _Walter Conrad Arensberg_

LOUVAIN

Bleeding and torn, ravished with sword and flame, By that blasphemer prince, who with the name Of God upon his lips betrayed the state He falsely swore to hold inviolate, Made mad by pride and reckless of the rod, Shaking his mailed fist in the face of God. But not in vain her martyrdom. Louvain, Like the brave maid of France shall rise again; Above her clotted hair a crown shall shine, From her dark ashes rise a hallowed shrine Where pilgrims from far lands shall heal their pain, Shrived by the sacred sorrow of Louvain.

_Harper’s Weekly_ _Oliver Herford_

THE ANCIENT SACRIFICE

Ye dead and gone great armies of the world, Sweet gleam the fields where ye were used to pass, With Death for leader, legioned like the grass, Day after day by dews of morning pearled.

Ye dead and gone great armies, ye were hurled ’Gainst other armies, great and dead and gone, In awful dark: ye died before the dawn, Ne’er knowing how your flags in peace are furled!

Ye are the tall fair forests that were felled To build a pyre for strife that it might cease; Ye are the white lambs slaughtered to bring peace;

Ye are the sweet ships sunk that storm be quelled; And ye are lilies plucked and set like stars About the blood-stained shrine of bygone wars!

_The Bellman_ _Mahlon Leonard Fisher_

THE PIPES OF THE NORTH

Do ye hear ’em sternly soundin’ through the noises of the street, O heart from the heather overseas? Do ye leap up to greet ’em, does your pulse skip a beat? There’s a lad with a plaid and naked knees. Here where all is strange and foreign to the swing of kilt and sporran, With his head proud and high and a lightin’ in his eye, He’s skirlin’ ’em, he’s dirlin’ ’em, he’s blowin’ like a storm-- O pipes of the North, O the pibroch pourin’ forth, You’re fierce and loud as Winter but ye make the blood run warm!

All the battle-names of story, all the jewel-names of song Down the spate of the clangor swing and reel, And the claymores come a-flashin’ for a thousand years along From Can-More to bonnie Charlie and Lochiel. Though the high-singin’ bugle and the brazen crashin’ fugue’ll-- With the drum and the fife--wake the trampin’ lines to life, But neighin’ ’em, and brayin’ ’em, and shatterin’ all the air, O pipes of the North, when the legions thunder forth There’s naught like ye to lift ’em on to death or glory there!

Now he tunes an ancient ditty for the leal Highland lover, A rill of the mountain clear and pure, How the bee is in the blossom and the peewit passin’ over And the cloud-shadows chasin’ on the moor. Hark the carol of the chanter rollickin’ a skeltin’ canter, And the hum of the drones with their “wind-arisin’” tones! He’s flightin’ ’em, he’s kitin’ ’em, he’s flingin’ gay and free-- O pipes of the North, when the reel comes tumblin’ forth ’Tis the breeze amid the bracken or the wavelets on the sea!

Now hark the wrenchin’ sob of it, the “wild with all regret,” O heart from the heather overseas, For the homeland of your fathers, though you’ve never known it yet, ’Tween Tay and the outer Hebrides. O the rugged misty Highlands, O the grim and lonely islands, And the solemn fir and pine, and the grey tormented brine-- He’s trailin’ ’em, he’s wailin’ ’em, to tear your bosom’s core! O pipes of the North, when the long lament goes forth No sorrow’s left to utter, for the tongue can say no more!

Oh, Breton pipes are clear and strong, and Irish pipes are sweet And soft upon the heather overseas, But Scottish aye can take your throat or make ye swing your feet, O hark the lad a-paddlin’ on the keys! See him footin’ straight and proud through the wonder-gawkin’ crowd, With his feathered Glengarry like a gun at the carry; He’s bellin’ ’em, he’s yellin’ ’em, he’s skirlin’ high to you-- O pipes of the North, O the wild notes rushin’ forth, Ye’re sure the wings of Gaelic souls as far as blood is true!

_Scribner’s Magazine_ _E. Sutton_

OUT OF BABYLON

As I stole out of Babylon beyond the stolid warders, (My soul that dwelt in Babylon long, long ago!) The sound of cymbals and of lutes, of viols and recorders, Came up from khan and caravan, loud and low.

As I crept out of Babylon, the clangor and the babel, The strife of life, the haggling in the square and mart, Of the men who went in saffron and the men who went in sable, It tore me and it wore me, yea, it wore my heart.

As I fled out of Babylon, the cubits of the towers They seemed in very mockery to bar my way; The incense of the altars, and the hanging-garden flowers, They lured me with their glamour, but I would not stay.

We still flee out of Babylon, its vending and its vying, Its crying up to Mammon, its bowing down to Baal; We still flee out of Babylon, its sobbing and its sighing, Where the strong grow ever stronger, and the weary fail!

We still flee out of Babylon, the feverish, the fretful, That saps the sweetness of the soul and leaves but a rind; We still flee out of Babylon, and fain would be forgetful Of all within that thrall of wall threatening behind!

Oh, Babylon, oh, Babylon, your toiling and your teeming, Your canyons and your wonder-wealth,--not for such as we! We who have fled from Babylon contented are with dreaming,-- Dreaming of earth’s loveliness, happy to be free!

_The Bellman_ _Clinton Scollard_

“FUNERE MERSIT ACERBO”

(_Written by Giosué Carducci at the death of his little son Dante, and addressed to his brother Dante, who had taken his own life years before._)

O thou among the Tuscan hills asleep, Laid with our father in one grassy bed, Faintly, through the green sod above thy head, Hast thou not heard a plaintive child’s voice weep? It is my little son--at thy dark keep He knocketh, he who wore thy name, thy dread And sacred name; he too this life hath fled, Whose ways, my brother, thou didst find so steep. Among the flower-borders as he played, By sunny, childish visions smiled upon, The Shadow caught him to that world how other,-- Thy world long since! So now to that chill shade, Oh, welcome him! as backward toward the sun He turns his head, to look, and call his mother.

_The Bellman_ _Ruth Shepard Phelps_

AFTERWARDS

There was a day when death to me meant tears, And tearful takings-leave that had to be, And awed embarkings on an unshored sea, And sudden disarrangement of the years. But now I know that nothing interferes With the fixed forces when a tired man dies; That death is only answerings and replies, The chiming of a bell which no one hears, The casual slanting of a half-spent sun, The soft recessional of noise and coil, The coveted something time nor age can spoil; I know it is a fabric finely spun Between the stars and dark; to seize and keep, Such glad romances as we read in sleep.

_Boston Transcript_ _Mahlon Leonard Fisher_

EVENING

Go, little sorrows! From the evening wood Faint odors rise, that touch the heart like tears With inarticulate comfort. Lo, she bears A weary load--small cares that drug the blood, Small envies, sick desires for lesser good,-- All day, till now the evening re-appears, They drop away, and she with wonder rears Her aching height from needless servitude. The tree-tops are all music; light and soft The brook’s small feet go tinkling toward the sea Bearing the little day’s distress afar; While yonder, in the stillness set aloft, My one great Grief, still glimmering down on me, Smiles tremulous as a bereavèd Star.

_Yale Review_ _Charlotte Wilson_

LIGHTS THROUGH THE MIST

Some for the sadness and sweetness of far evening bells, Seeming to call a tryst, Yet, for my choice, all the comfort and kindness that wells From lights through the mist.

In the dim dusk so unreal that it seems like a dream Hard for the heart to resist, Mellowing the pain of the close-drawing darkness, they stream, Lights through the mist.

Blurred to new beauty, the blues and the browns and the grays Shimmer with soft amethyst; Then God’s own glory of gold as it shines through the haze, Lights through the mist!

_Century_ _William Rose Benét_

THE TWELVE-FORTY-FIVE

(FOR EDWARD J. WHEELER)