Ambition, hate, revenge, the secret sway
Of priest and kingcraft shall be done away
By faith in beauty, chivalry and good.
One God made all, and will all wrongs forgive
Save their hell-heart who stab man’s hope to live
In mutual freedom, peace and brotherhood.
OUR PRISONERS OF WAR IN GERMANY
October, 1918.
Prisoners to a foe inhuman, Oh! but our hearts rebel:
Defenceless victims ye are, in claws of spite a prey,
Conquering your torturers, enduring night and day
Malice, year-long drawn out your noble spirits to quell.
Fearsomer than death this rack they ranged, and reckon’d well
’Twould harrow our homes, and plied, such devilish aim had they,
That England roused to rage should wrong with wrong repay,
And smirch her envied honour in deeds unspeakable.
Nor trouble we just Heaven that quick revenge be done
On Satan’s chamberlains highseated in Berlin;
Their reek floats round the world on all lands ’neath the sun:
Tho’ in craven Germany was no man found, not one
With spirit enough to cry Shame!—Nay, but on such sin
Follows Perdition eternal ... and it has begun.
HARVEST-HOME
VERSES TO THE AMERICANS ON THEIR THANKSGIVING DAY, CELEBRATED IN ENGLAND NOVEMBER 28, 1918.
A toast for West and East
Drink on this Thursday feast
Last in November,
The year when Albion’s lands
Across the sea join hands—
Drink and remember!
Nineteen-eighteen fulfill’d
The kindly purpose will’d
By the Ever-living,
When first in hope upstay’d
The Pilgrim Fathers made
Harvest thanksgiving.
And since the seed bore fruit,
Which they went forth to root
In the wildernesses,
Ye now return to find
The Rose that they resigned
With their distresses.
’Twas when the wide world o’er,
Whatever peaceful shore
Britons inherit,
Britons claim’d right of birth,
And fought hell in the mirth
Of Shakespeare’s spirit.