Strange how the saddened centuries
Stood clothed in garments red with blood
Poured from the veins of innocents,
Their mothers glad to give them birth,
Their fathers driven forth to slay
And to be slain on battle fields!
Why?—Why?
Because a few men sold their souls
For little heaps of minted gold—
Round pieces stamped with Cæsar's face
Or Alexander's awful brow—
Gold pieces whose possession gives
Command of battle ships and legions armed for enemies,
Raised up because of gold! gold! gold!
For when man gathers overmuch
God is exchanged for paltry dust;
And when God goes the devil comes
In panoply of armies:
Drums beating—
Trumpets blowing—
Flags fluttering—-
Men hating, fighting, bleeding, dying;
Women wailing and beating their breasts;
Cities in conflagration;
Tall towers tumbling to an accompaniment of thunder,
Tumbling down among the statues and the pictures,
Silencing the song of the singers,
Making the beautiful ugly,
Smothering in wide encompassing smoke
The children—the glad, the wonderful children—
God's lilies of laughter—
His immaculate ones!
I tell you gold is the cause of war,
That war is the price we pay for gold—
Gold for which we give God!
You will not do this thing again!
What thing?
Mistake of owning overmuch.
CAN YOU FORGET
Can you forget the pyramids, Persepolis and Tyre?
Can you forget the barges on the Nile,
The sculptor with his chisel and his artist-soul a-fire
With a dream of Mother Isis and her smile?
His dream that made immortal
One pillar of the portal—
'Tis broken now but beautiful above the yellow Nile!
Can you forget the reedy pipes, the cymbals and the songs;
The sun upon the desert like a targe;
The shaking of the sistrum and the beating of the gongs;
The fury of the spear-thrust in the charge?
O leave your milk and honey,
Your little bags of money,
And dream the ancient dream again above the yellow Nile!