YOU who shall come, exalt these childless dead
As your great fathers, from whose fire you are bred;
The dead beget you now, for now they give
Their hope of sons, that you, their sons, may live.
MARGARET LEIGH
(SOMERVILLE)
TWO EPITAPHS
I. ON A DIPLOMAT.
OH, who will bid me rise again
That gambled with the souls of men?
Those whose lives I signed away
Will meet me at the Judgment Day,
My dead: can they forgive and pray?
All honest men, pray for me, and pray well,
Lest true men’s curses send the false to hell.
II. ON A PROFITEER.
I FATTENED on the blood and tears
Of these long laborious years;
Out of loss came forth my gain,
Watered by another’s pain:
Who shall bid me rise again?
Pray for me, all poor men, and pray right well,
Lest poor men’s curses bring the rich to hell.
SONNET: THE JOURNALIST
HE called for blood, and would not shed his own,
He sat at ease, and sent young men to die
With his strong pen; he was the enemy
Stalking at noontide, by whose hand were sown
Rank tares among us—love of country grown
To poisonous cant, and blind hostility.
He forged a chain to lead the people by,
A chain of words, rattling with strident tone.
He battened on men’s selfishness and fear,
He pulled the strings that shook their statesmen down;
The people were content to sit and hear
His platitudes, and tremble at his frown,
And followed him with meek attentive ear
Till His Mendacity assumed the crown.
E. H. W. MEYERSTEIN
(MAGDALEN)