Not with indifferent or with flippant hand
Draw the curtain's corner to disclose
A rose, a leaf, a path through this sad land
Untrampled yet by foes.
Out of the Past—the Heart's last Hermitage—
A wistful Phantom glides to me again
Here where I pace that solitary cage
They call, The World of Men.
In vain she mirrors me the Golden Age;
Vain is her Voice of Spring in wood and glen;
The winter sunlight falls across my page
Gilding a broken pen.
Withered the magic gardens which were mine;
Eden, in embers, blackens in the sun;
Rooting amid crushed roses the Wild Swine
Still root, and spare not one.
Village and spire and scented forest path,
Pastures and brooks, meadows and hills and fens
Heard not the secret whispering in Gath
There where the Gray Boar dens,
Till burst his dreadful clamour on the Rhine
And all the World shrank deafened by the roar
Aghast before the out-rush of Wild Swine
Led by the great Gray Boar.
Fallen the cloud-capped castles which were mine;
Cities in ashes whiten in the sun;
Rending the ruined shrines, the Rhenish Swine
Still rend, and spare not one.
PREFACE
The Crown Prince is partly right; the majority in the world is against him and what he stands for; but not against Germany and the Germans.
He professes surprise at the attitude of the United States. That attitude is the natural result of various causes among which are the following: