1915.
IN TIME OF "THE BREAKING OF NATIONS" {1}
I
Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk.
II
Only thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch-grass;Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass.
III
Yonder a maid and her wight Come whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night Ere their story die.
1915.
CRY OF THE HOMELESS
AFTER THE PRUSSIAN INVASION OF BELGIUM
"Instigator of the ruin -
Whichsoever thou mayst be Of the masterful of Europe That contrived our misery -Hear the wormwood-worded greeting From each city, shore, and lea Of thy victims:
"Conqueror, all hail to thee!"
"Yea: 'All hail!' we grimly shout thee That wast author, fount, and head Of these wounds, whoever proven When our times are throughly read.
'May thy loved be slighted, blighted, And forsaken,' be it said By thy victims, 'And thy children beg their bread!'
"Nay: a richer malediction! -
Rather let this thing befall In time's hurling and unfurling On the night when comes thy call;That compassion dew thy pillow And bedrench thy senses all For thy victims, Till death dark thee with his pall."August 1915.
BEFORE MARCHING AND AFTER
(in Memoriam F. W. G.)
Orion swung southward aslant Where the starved Egdon pine-trees had thinned, The Pleiads aloft seemed to pant With the heather that twitched in the wind;But he looked on indifferent to sights such as these, Unswayed by love, friendship, home joy or home sorrow, And wondered to what he would march on the morrow.
The crazed household-clock with its whirr Rang midnight within as he stood, He heard the low sighing of her Who had striven from his birth for his good;But he still only asked the spring starlight, the breeze, What great thing or small thing his history would borrow From that Game with Death he would play on the morrow.