(One of a group of six sonnets, entitled “Carnage,” written in September, 1914)
So thin, so frail the opalescent ice
Where yesterday, in lordly pageant, rose
The monumental nations—the repose
Of continents at peace! Realities
Solid as earth they seemed; yet in a trice
Their bastions crumbled in the surging floes
Of unconceivable, inhuman woes,
Gulfed in a mad, unmeaning sacrifice.
We, who survive that world-quake, cower and start,