Clearly we see the picture,
Horror has fixed our eyes.
Fighting to guard its hearthstones
A nation mangled lies.
Fire has charred its beauty,
Murder has stilled its cries;
And truths we love and cherish
Hang in the trembling scale.
If you win, we win by proxy,
If you fail, we are doomed to fail.
The world is beset by a monster,
Yet we watch to see who shall prevail.
Our souls are racked and quickened,
But prudence counsels no.
So we lavish our gold and pity
And wait to see how it will go,—
This pivotal war of the ages
With its heartrending ebb and flow.
For ever there comes the moment
When destiny bids “choose.”
By the edge of the sword men perish,
By selfishness all they lose.
So Belgium stands transfigured
As the one who did not refuse.
Robert Grant
CRY OF THE HOMELESS
Instigator of the ruin—
Whichsoever thou mayst be
Of the mastering minds of Europe
That contrived our misery—
Hear the wormwood-worded greeting
From each city, shore, and lea
Of thy victims:
“Enemy, all hail to thee!”
Yea: “All hail!” we grimly shout thee
That wast author, fount, and head
Of these wounds, whoever proven
When our times are throughly read.
“May thy dearest ones be blighted
And forsaken,” be it said
By thy victims,
“And thy children beg their bread!”
Nay: too much the malediction.—
Rather let this thing befall
In the unfurling of the future,
On the night when comes thy call:
That compassion dew thy pillow
And absorb thy senses all
For thy victims,
Till death dark thee with his pall.
Thomas Hardy
August, 1915
