Great dawns have shown the way
When we have wandered.
God, in the battle sway,
What have we squandered?
The International William Griffith
TO THE NECROPHILE
(After reading of the affectionate desire of Germany “to get
closer to France,” expressed by the German Secretary of State to
the British Ambassador at Berlin, as published in the British White Papers.)
With love are you gone mad, O lover of France,
That you should be embracing with your arms
Her gory body for the gore that warms
Only a monster in his dalliance?
Alas! she is alive with her alarms,
Unwilling yet for the enraged romance.
Assault her sacredness of Paris, lance
Her flank with such a wound as has its charms.
For you who want for your obscene amours
The body of a soul that is not yours,
For you who want a wound to enter by,
For you who want a corpse upon your heart.
Coupling with France if France would only die,
Not yours the human vow: “Till death us part!”
The Trend Walter Conrad Arensberg
LOUVAIN
Bleeding and torn, ravished with sword and flame,
By that blasphemer prince, who with the name
Of God upon his lips betrayed the state
He falsely swore to hold inviolate,
Made mad by pride and reckless of the rod,
Shaking his mailed fist in the face of God.
But not in vain her martyrdom. Louvain,
Like the brave maid of France shall rise again;
Above her clotted hair a crown shall shine,
From her dark ashes rise a hallowed shrine
Where pilgrims from far lands shall heal their pain,
Shrived by the sacred sorrow of Louvain.
Harper’s Weekly Oliver Herford