THE HUN AS IDEALIST.
A guileless nation, very soft of heart,
Keen to embrace the whole wide world as brothers,
Anxious to do our reasonable part
In reparation of the sins of others,
We note with pained surprise
How little we are loved by the Allies.
What if the Fatherland was led astray
From homely paths, the scene, of childlike gambols,
Lured to pursue Ambition's naughty way
(And incidentally make earth a shambles),
All through a wicked Kaiser—
Are they, for that blind fault, to brutalize her?
Just when we hoped the past was clean forgot,
They want us to restore their goods and greenery!
They want us to replace upon the spot
The "theft" (oh, how unfair!) of that machinery;
By which our honest labours
Might have secured the markets of our neighbours!
Bearing the cross for other people's, crime,
Eager to purge the wrong by true repentance,
When to a purer air we fain would climb,
How can we do it under such a sentence?
Is this the law of Love,
Supposed to animate the Blessed Dove?
Oh, not for mere material loss alone,
Not for our trade, reduced to pulp, we whimper,
But for our dashed illusions we make moan,
Our spiritual aims grown limp and limper,
Our glorious aspirations
Touching a really noble League of Nations.
So, like a phantom dawn, it fades to dark,
This vision of a world made new and better;
And he whose heavenly notes recalled the lark
Soaring, in air without an earthly fetter—
WILSON is gone, the mystic,
Whose views, like ours, were so idealistic!
O.S.