The Woodcarver, somberly with mystic emphasis:
The planes are companied always
By the souls of the young dead fliers,
The air-men who have died,
Not knowing victory,
Who cannot rest in graves,
But still ride on the air,
Asking, How will it end?
The Woodcarver is still staring up into the sky. The child steals up to him, and slips his hand in his.
Woodcarver in a sort of chant to the child:
Yea, in the fair blue air,
In the silken glass-blown air,
Full of its flowery forms,
Or un-embodied souls,
These disembodied fly—
Asking, How will it end?
Myriad wonders soar,
Fly with our flying hordes,
The flying hordes of our foe,
Asking, How will it end?
Youth with a smile on its lips,
Youth with untired powers,
Youth with its gallant need
Of dying for a belief.
Now Youth flies forward,
Softly on lucid air,
Lifting our earth-faces,
Guiding our feet that walk
In the old stubborn ways,
Calling us to the air,
Asking, How does it end?
What is the gain, asks Youth,
That we died and never grudged
Our generous young death,
Unless you learn the Word,
And learn that Nothing is,
Nothing can ever be,
Until men turn them to
Their labors for a thing
That shall be greater far
Than any gain of war?
Dead youth with untired powers—
Defeated of its life,
And life it could have given—
Hangs on surrounding air,
And tries to speak the Word,
The new, all-languaged Word
By which shall come release
From the Torture of the World,
The Battle cry of ... Peace!
They all cluster around the doorway watching the marvelous evolutions of the airplanes. The pigeons soar under them, and the child for the first time smiles—
The child, quaintly:
The birds taught them to fly.
Will the sweet birds teach them peace?
American smiling, rumpling the child’s hair tenderly: