ENVOI
Prince, I bring you my April praises,
But O! on my heart a shadow lies;
For a face I see not at all my gaze is—
Ah! where have they hidden those great eyes?
Puck Richard Le Gallienne
AN EPITAPH
Perhaps it doesn’t matter that you died,
Life is a bal masqué which you saw through.
You never told on Life—you had your pride;
But Life has told on you.
The Trend Walter Conrad Arensberg
WAR
Fools, fools, fools,
Your blood is hot to-day.
It cools
When you are clay.
It joins the very clod
Wherein you look at God,
Wherein at last you see
The living God,
The loving God,
Which was your enemy.
The Nation Witter Bynner
FRANCE
Half artist and half anchorite,
Part siren and part Socrates,
Her face—alluring and yet recondite—
Smiled through her salons and academies.
Lightly she wore her double mask,
Till sudden, at war’s kindling spark,
Her inmost self, in shining mail and casque,
Blazed to the world her single soul—
Jeanne d’Arc!
The Nation. Percy MacKaye
THE DRUM
There’s a rhythm down the road where the elms overarch
Of the drum, of the drum,
There’s a glint through the green, there’s a column on the march,
Here they come, here they come,
To the flat resounding clank they are tramping rank on rank,
And the bayonet flashes ripple from the flank to the flank.
“I am rhythm, marching rhythm,” says the drum.
“No aid am I desiring of the loud brazen choiring,
“Of bugle or of trumpet the lilt and the lyring,
“I’m the slow dogged rhythm, unending, untiring,
“I am rhythm, marching rhythm,” says the drum.
“I am rhythm, dogged rhythm, and the plodders feel me with ’em,
“I’m the two miles an hour that is empire, that is power,
“I’m the slow resistless crawl in the dust-cloud’s choking pall,
“I’m the marching days that run from the dawn to set of sun,
“I’m the rifle and the kit and the dragging weight of it,
“I’m the jaws grimly set and the faces dripping sweat,
“I’m the how, why, and when, the Almighty made for men,”
Says the rhythm, marching rhythm, of the drum.
“Did you call my song ‘barbaric’? Did you mutter, ‘out of date’?
“When you hear me with the foemen then your cry will come too late.
“Here are hearts a-beating for you, to my pulsing as I come,
“To the rhythm, tramping rhythm,
“To the rhythm, dogged rhythm,
“To the dogged tramping rhythm
“Of the drum!”
There’s a clashing snarling rhythm down the valley broad and ample
Of the drum, kettledrum,
There’s a low, swelling rumor that is cavalry a-trample,
Here they come, here they come,
To the brassy crash and wrangle, to the horseman’s clink and jangle,
And the restive legs beneath ’em all a-welter and a-tangle.
“I am rhythm, dancing rhythm,” says the drum.
“White and sorrel, roan and dapple, hocks as shiny as an apple,
“Don’t they make a splendid showing, ears a-pricking, tails a-blowing?
“Good boys—bless ’em—well they’re knowing all my tricks to set ’em going
“To my rhythm, dancing rhythm!” says the drum.
“I am rhythm, clashing rhythm, and the horses feel me with ’em.
“I’m the foray and the raid, I’m the glancing sabre-blade.
“Now I’m here, now I’m there, flashing on the unaware.
“How I scout before the ranks, how I cloud along the flanks,
“How the highway smokes behind me let the faint stars tell that find me
“All night through, all night through, when the bridles drip with dew.
“I’m the labor, toil, and pain, I’m the loss that shall be gain,”
Says the rhythm, clashing rhythm, of the drum.
“Did you speak of ‘useless slaughter’? Did you murmur ‘Christian love’?
“Pray that such as these before you when the war-cloud bursts above,
“With the bridle on the pommel meet the foemen as they come,
“To the rhythm, dashing rhythm,
“To the rhythm, crashing rhythm
“To the crashing, dashing rhythm
“Of the drum!”
There’s an echo shakes the valley o’er the rhythm deep and slow
Of the drum, of the drum,
’Tis the guns, the guns a-rolling on the bridges down below,
Here they come, here they come,
Hark the felloes grind and lumber through the shadows gray and umber,
And the triple spans a-panting up the slope the stones encumber,
With the rhythm, distant rhythm, of the drum.
“’Tis the long Shapes of Fear that the moonlight silvers here,
“And the jolting limber’s weighted with the silent cannoneer,
“’Tis the Pipes of Peace are passing, O ye people, give an ear!”
Says the rhythm, iron rhythm, of the drum.
“They are rhythm, thunder rhythm, and they do not need me with ’em,
“That can overtone my choir like the bourdon from the spire.
“Avant-garde am I to these Lords of dreadful revelries,
“Iron Cyclops with an eye to confound the earth and sky.
“Love and Fear, Love and Fear, neither one but both revere,
“And whatever grace ye deal let it be from courts of steel,
“Set the guns’ emplacement then to expound the Law to men,”
Says the rhythm, iron rhythm, of the drum.
“O ye coiners, sentence-joiners, in a fatted, tradesman’s land,
“Here’s evangel Pentecostal that all nations understand,
“When they speak before the battle fools and theories are dumb!”
God be with ’em, and the rhythm,
And the rhythm, iron rhythm,
And the rolling thunder rhythm
Of the drum!
There’s a rhythm still and toneless with the wind amid the green,
Of the drum, muffled drum,
And there’s arms reversed, and something ’neath a flag that goes between
As they come, as they come.
“Just a soldier, nothing more, such as all the ages bore
“And as time and tide shall bear them till the sun be sere and hoar,”
Says the rhythm, muffled rhythm, of the drum.
“No more am I requiring of the keen brazen lyring
“Than ‘taps’ from the bugle—some shots for the firing.
“Hats off; stand aside; it is all I’m desiring,”
Says the rhythm, muffled rhythm, of the drum.
“I am rhythm, muffled rhythm; long and deep farewell go with him,
“Hands that bore their portion through tasks our nature needs must do,
“Feet that stepped the ancient rhyme of the battle-march of Time.
“Blood or tribute, steel or gold, still Vae Victis as of old,
“Stern and curt the message runs taught to sons and sons of sons.
“Chair à canon, would you call? What else are we, one and all?
“Write it thus to close his span: ‘Here there lies a fighting man,’”
Says the rhythm, muffled rhythm, of the drum.
“O ye farms upon the hillside and ye cities by the sea,
“With the laughter of young mothers and the babes about the knee,
“’Tis a heart that once beat for you that is passing, still and dumb,
“To the rhythm, muffled rhythm,
“To the rhythm, solemn rhythm,
“To the slow and muffled rhythm
“Of the drum!”
Scribner’s Magazine E. Sutton
IF!
Suppose ’twere done!
The lanyard pulled on every shotted gun;
Into the wheeling death-clutch sent
Each millioned armament,
To grapple there
On land, on sea and under, and in air!
Suppose at last ’twere come—
Now, while each bourse and shop and mill is dumb
And arsenals and dockyards hum,—
Now all complete, supreme,
That vast, Satanic dream!—
Each field were trampled, soaked,
Each stream dyed, choked,
Each leaguered city and blockaded port
Made famine’s sport;
The empty wave
Made reeling dreadnought’s grave;
Cathedral, castle, gallery, smoking fell
’Neath bomb and shell;
In deathlike trance
Lay industry, finance;
Two thousand years’
Bequest, achievement, saving disappears,
In blood and tears,
In widowed woe
That slum and palace equal know,
In civilization’s suicide,—
What served thereby, what satisfied?
For justice, freedom, right, what wrought?
Naught!—
Save, after the great cataclysm, perhap
On the world’s shaken map
New lines, more near or far,
Binding to King or Czar
In fostering hate
Some newly vassaled state;
And passion, lust and pride made satiate;
And just a trace
Of lingering smile on Satan’s face!
Boston New Bureau Bartholomew F. Griffin
PRELUDE
Embracing the woman I love, I stood by the stream that circles the town I love in the peace of the
Summer night,
And I loved the joyous and cruel leash of life at my throat,
And I loved the peace in the soul of the woman I love, and I knew that the net of her beauty was cast in a sea of peace.
I loved the silver-blue flood of the moon that flowed over the quiet town
And the trees that shaded the stream and the town I love;
(For Nature is personal always to me and is never untrue and intrusive.)
The garrulous, intimate talk of the trees, I loved;
And the birds asleep in their nests in the trees,
And the rosy wet-mouthed babes that never have minted speech, asleep in the quiet town and kissed by the warm and mothering night—
The merry uncertain tentative falling leaves that fell on the rocks and the path and were carried
laughing away by the musical stream, I loved,
And the sentient gaiety of the flowers I felt were near and knew my affection, I loved;
And the neighborly boisterous wind that trampled in play across the yellowing wheat;
And the cattle that lay in the meadow;
And the moonlight that hid in the silver sheen of the birch by the gate, I loved;
And the moonlight that lay like frost that had over-slept on the Summer grass;
And I loved the peaceful, close-breathing, embracing night that breathed the scent of unseen flowers and the fragrance of the woman I love.
Ancient and cruel songs passed deathward into the night,
And symbols of ancient wrongs went mournfully by and away,
And the peace that is finally done with old desires and with conquering
Caressingly laid her cheek, with illimitable quietude, between my cheek and the cheek of the woman
I love,
And the three of us were one as we stood by the stream in the peace of the Summer night.
The silence gathered and rolled above us fold upon exquisite fold,
Till tenderness made me eager to shout and to sing aloud in the positive light of Day,
And to see the early marching sun brushing the fields and the town I love with his gold-shod feet,
And wrapping the flowers and the intimate personal trees in the sudden flame of his breath.
Christ; Christ; Christ;—
That this day dawned;
Peace; Peace; Peace—
Raped and mangled and dead,
And none to lay a healing hand for easement on her head.
War; War; War—
Came with withering day.
Ancient cruel songs
From red throats hurled
And none to sing a healing song of peace in all the world.
The sunlight is a wound to me and Jesus Christ has rotted overnight,
And peace is now a corpse whose naked body lies half cold upon a shield.
The morning wind has grown a hawk’s strong claws,
And nothing brings my heart so near to breaking as sunlight surging over the long grass.
The Masses Edmond McKenna
THE OTHER ARMY
O’er ruined road past draggled field,
O’er twisted stones of shaken street,
Marches an army terrible,
The army of the bleeding feet,—
Of skirted feet that now first leave
Immaculate field and kitchen floor,—
Old feet that slept beside the hearth,
Wee feet that twinkled by the door.
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.