Great creeds grow thews, or else they die.
Thought clothed in deed is lord.
What are thy gods? Thy gods brought love?
They also brought a sword.
Unchallenged, shall we always stand,
Secure, apart, aloof?
Be not deceived. That hour shall come
Which puts us to the proof.
Then, that we hold the trust we have
Safeguarded for our sons,
Let us cease dreaming! Let us have
More ships, more troops, more guns!
WITH THE SUBMARINES
ABOVE, the baffled twilight fails; beneath, the
blind snakes creep;
Beside us glides the charnel shark, our pilot
through the deep;
And, lurking where low headlands shield from
cruising scout and spy,
We bide the signal through the gloom that bids
us slay or die.
All watchful, mute, the crouching guns that guard
the strait sea lanes—
Watchful and hawklike, plumed with hate, the
desperate aeroplanes—
And still as death and swift as fate, above the
darkling coasts,
The spying Wireless sows the night with troops
of stealthy ghosts,
While hushed through all her huddled streets the
tide-walled city waits
The drumming thunders that announce brute
battle at her gates.
Southward a hundred windy leagues, through
storms that blind and bar,
Our cheated cruisers search the waves, our captains
seek the war;
But here the port of peril is; the foeman's
dreadnoughts ride
Sullen and black against the moon, upon a sullen
tide.
And only we to launch ourselves against their
stark advance—
To guide uncertain lightnings through these
treacherous seas of chance!
. . . . . .
And now a wheeling searchlight paints a signal on
the night;
And now the bellowing guns are loud with the
wild lust of fight.