There’s a rhythm still and toneless with the wind amid the green,
Of the drum, muffled drum,
And there’s arms reversed, and something ’neath a flag that goes between
As they come, as they come.
“Just a soldier, nothing more, such as all the ages bore
“And as time and tide shall bear them till the sun be sere and hoar,”
Says the rhythm, muffled rhythm, of the drum.
“No more am I requiring of the keen brazen lyring
“Than ‘taps’ from the bugle—some shots for the firing.
“Hats off; stand aside; it is all I’m desiring,”
Says the rhythm, muffled rhythm, of the drum.
“I am rhythm, muffled rhythm; long and deep farewell go with him,
“Hands that bore their portion through tasks our nature needs must do,
“Feet that stepped the ancient rhyme of the battle-march of Time.
“Blood or tribute, steel or gold, still Vae Victis as of old,
“Stern and curt the message runs taught to sons and sons of sons.
“Chair à canon, would you call? What else are we, one and all?
“Write it thus to close his span: ‘Here there lies a fighting man,’”
Says the rhythm, muffled rhythm, of the drum.
“O ye farms upon the hillside and ye cities by the sea,
“With the laughter of young mothers and the babes about the knee,
“’Tis a heart that once beat for you that is passing, still and dumb,
“To the rhythm, muffled rhythm,
“To the rhythm, solemn rhythm,
“To the slow and muffled rhythm
“Of the drum!”
Scribner’s Magazine E. Sutton
IF!
Suppose ’twere done!
The lanyard pulled on every shotted gun;
Into the wheeling death-clutch sent
Each millioned armament,
To grapple there
On land, on sea and under, and in air!
Suppose at last ’twere come—
Now, while each bourse and shop and mill is dumb
And arsenals and dockyards hum,—
Now all complete, supreme,
That vast, Satanic dream!—
Each field were trampled, soaked,
Each stream dyed, choked,
Each leaguered city and blockaded port
Made famine’s sport;
The empty wave
Made reeling dreadnought’s grave;
Cathedral, castle, gallery, smoking fell
’Neath bomb and shell;
In deathlike trance
Lay industry, finance;
Two thousand years’
Bequest, achievement, saving disappears,
In blood and tears,
In widowed woe
That slum and palace equal know,
In civilization’s suicide,—
What served thereby, what satisfied?
For justice, freedom, right, what wrought?
Naught!—
Save, after the great cataclysm, perhap
On the world’s shaken map
New lines, more near or far,
Binding to King or Czar
In fostering hate
Some newly vassaled state;
And passion, lust and pride made satiate;
And just a trace
Of lingering smile on Satan’s face!
Boston New Bureau Bartholomew F. Griffin
PRELUDE
Embracing the woman I love, I stood by the stream that circles the town I love in the peace of the
Summer night,
And I loved the joyous and cruel leash of life at my throat,
And I loved the peace in the soul of the woman I love, and I knew that the net of her beauty was cast in a sea of peace.
I loved the silver-blue flood of the moon that flowed over the quiet town
And the trees that shaded the stream and the town I love;
(For Nature is personal always to me and is never untrue and intrusive.)
The garrulous, intimate talk of the trees, I loved;
And the birds asleep in their nests in the trees,
And the rosy wet-mouthed babes that never have minted speech, asleep in the quiet town and kissed by the warm and mothering night—
The merry uncertain tentative falling leaves that fell on the rocks and the path and were carried
laughing away by the musical stream, I loved,
And the sentient gaiety of the flowers I felt were near and knew my affection, I loved;
And the neighborly boisterous wind that trampled in play across the yellowing wheat;
And the cattle that lay in the meadow;
And the moonlight that hid in the silver sheen of the birch by the gate, I loved;
And the moonlight that lay like frost that had over-slept on the Summer grass;
And I loved the peaceful, close-breathing, embracing night that breathed the scent of unseen flowers and the fragrance of the woman I love.
Ancient and cruel songs passed deathward into the night,
And symbols of ancient wrongs went mournfully by and away,
And the peace that is finally done with old desires and with conquering
Caressingly laid her cheek, with illimitable quietude, between my cheek and the cheek of the woman
I love,
And the three of us were one as we stood by the stream in the peace of the Summer night.