A NATION'S FREEDOM
Word of the Tsar! and the drowse malign is broken;
The stone is rolled from the tomb and Poland free,
This is the strong evangel. The guns have spoken;
And the scribble of flame of the guns is Liberty.
Have you not met her, my lords, a-walk in the garden,
Ranging the dawn, even she, the three times dead?
Nay! But in bondage, sundered from light and pardon--
But now the water is wine, and the marriage read.
Word of the Tsar! My lords, I think of another
Crowned with dolour, forbidden the sun abased,
Bloodied, unbroken, abiding--Ah! Queen, my Mother,
I have prayed the feet of the Judgment of God to haste.
Count me the price in blood that we have not squandered,
Spendthrifts of blood from our cradle, wastefully true,
Name me the sinister fields where the Wild Geese wandered,
Lille and Cremona and Landen and Waterloo.
When the white steel-foam swept on the tidal onset,
When the last wave lapsed, and the sea turned back to its sleep,
We were there in the waste and the wreckage, Queen of the Sunset!
Paying the price of the dreams that cannot sleep.
The altar is set; we uplift again the chalice;
The priest is in purple; the bell booms to the sacrifice.
The trumpets summon to death, and Ireland rallies--
Tool or free? We have paid, and over-paid, the price.
Word of the Tsar! And Russia rises to vision,
Poland and Ireland--thus, my lords, was an augured fate.
The days draw in, and the ways narrow down to decision--
Will they chaffer, and cheapen, and ruin, or yield to be great?
Written in Belgium, August, 1914
A SONG OF THE IRISH ARMIES
A wind blew out of the Prussian plain;
It scourged Liege, and it broke Louvain,
And Belgium shook with the tramp of Cain,
That a Kaiser might be mad.
"Iron is God!"--and they served him well--
"Honour a mark for shot and shell."
So they loosed the devils out of Hell
From Birr to Allahabad.
THE OLD SOLDIERS SING:
But we took them from Mons to the banks of the Marne,
And helped them back on their red return;
We can swim the Rhine if the bridges burn,
And Mike O'Leary's the lad!
Not for this did our fathers fall;
That truth, and pity, and love, and all
Should break in dust at a trumpet call,
Yea! all things clean and old.
Not to this had we sacrificed:
To sit at the last where the slayers diced,
With blood-hot hands for the robes of Christ,
And snatch at the Devil's gold.
THE NEW SOLDIERS SING:
To Odin's challenge we cried Amen!
We stayed the plough, and laid by the pen,
And we shouldered our guns like gentlemen,
That the wiser weak should hold.
Blood on the land, and blood on the sea?
So it stands as ordained to be,
Stamp, and signet, and guarantee
Of the better ways we knew.
Time for the plough when the sword has won;
The loom will wait on the crashing gun,
And the hands of peace drop benison
When the task of death is through.
OLD AND NEW SOLDIERS SING:
Then lift the flag of the Last Crusade!
And fill the ranks of the Last Brigade!
March on to the fields where the world's re-made,
And the Ancient Dreams come true!
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS AND PARODIES ***