They diced with Death. Their big sea-boots
Were greased with blood. They swept the seas
For England; and—we reap the fruits
Of their heroic deviltries!
Our creed is in the cold machine,
The inhuman devildoms of brain,
The bolt that splits the midnight main,
Loosed at a lever's touch; the lean
Torpedo; "Twenty Miles of Power";
The steel-clad Dreadnoughts' dark array!
Yet ... we that keep the conning tower
Are not so strong as they
Whose watchword we disdain.
They laughed at odds for England's sake!
We count, yet cast our strength away.
One Admiral with the soul of Drake
Would break the fleets of hell to-day!
Give us the splendid heavens of youth,
Give us the banners of deathless flame,
The ringing watchwords of their fame,
The faith, the hope, the simple truth!
Then shall the Deep indeed be swayed
Through all its boundless breadth and length,
Nor this proud England lean dismayed
On twenty miles of strength,
Or shrink from aught but shame.
Pull out by night, O leave the shore
And lighted streets of Plymouth town,
Pull out into the Deep once more!
There, in the night of their renown, The same great waters roll their gloom
Around our midget period;
And the huge decks that Raleigh trod
Over our petty darkness loom!
Along the line the cry is passed
From all their heaven-illumined spars,
Clear as a bell, from mast to mast,
It rings against the stars:
Before the world—was God.
NEW WARS FOR OLD
"Peace with its luxury is the corrupter of Nations."
Any militarist Journal.
I
Peace! When have we prayed for peace?
Over us burns a star
Bright, beautiful, red for strife!
Yours are only the drum and the fife
And the golden braid and the surface of life!
Ours is the white-hot war!
II