Gay flags flying down the street;
Comes the drum's insistent beat
Like a fierce, gigantic pulse—
And the screaming fife exults!
PEACE
(The Fisheries dispute having been amicably compromised, the world is at peace again. .... News Despatch.)
'At peace'? The world has never been at peace—
Its wars are never-ending; there is naught
In all its battles like these overwrought
And storming hours with their dark increase.
The cities roar; in every street one sees
Women and children, battle-wounded, caught.—
No slaves, no shattered hosts have ever fought
So bitterly, so hopeless of release...
Well, if it must be war, take up the sword,
Facing the world with grim and savage glee;
And, with the courage of a Faith restored,
Strike till the darkness falters, and we see
That liberty is no mere gaudy word,
And peace no slothful, placid mockery.
THE DYING DECADENT
And when the evening came he fell asleep,
And dreamed a dream of pallid loveliness:
He wandered in a forest dark and deep,
Where phantoms passed him with a soft caress;
Where shadows moved and ghostly spirits stood
Sphinxes of silence, wraiths of mystery;
A magic wood, a strange and scented wood
Where roses sprang from every withered tree.
A wood that woke his wonder and his fear,
A wood of whispered spells and shameful lore,
Beyond whose furthest rim he seemed to hear
A lonely sea upon a lonelier shore.
Visions swept by him with a chanted spell,
Crouched at his feet and murmured at his side—
And like a dim refrain there rose and fell
The restless minor of an ebbing tide...
Then, amidst broken sighs and wafts of song,
Borne on the breezes blowing from the west,
He saw one figure dancing in the throng
More wan and wonderful than all the rest.