This is the song of the Air—
The lifting, drifting air,
The eddying, steadying air,
The wine of its limitless space:—
May it nerve us at last to dare
Even death with undaunted face!
Hey ho! for the Air!
VICTORY!
S. J. DUNCAN-CLARK
in The Chicago Evening Post, November 11, 1918
Permission to reproduce in this book
OUT of the night it leaped the seas—
The four long years of night!
“The foe is beaten to his knees,
And triumph crowns the fight!”
It sweeps the world from shore to shore,
By wave and wind ’tis flung,
It grows into a mighty roar
Of siren, bell and tongue.
Where little peoples knelt in fear,
They stand in joy today;
The hour of their redemption here,
Their feet on Freedom’s way.
The kings and kaisers flee their doom,
Fall bloody crown and throne!
Room for the people! Room! Make room!
They march to claim their own!
Now God be praised we lived to see
His Sun of Justice rise,
His Sun of Righteous Liberty,
To gladden all our skies!
And God be praised for those who died,
Whate’er their clime or breed,
Who, fighting bravely side by side,
A world from thraldom freed!
And God be praised for those who, spite
Of woundings sore and deep,
Survive to see the Cause of Right
O’er all its barriers sweep!
God and the people—This our cry!
O, God, thy peace we sing!
The peace that comes through victory,
And dwells where Thou art King.
THE HOMECOMING
LEROY FOLGE
Grief for a brother, an American who was killed in France, brought about the suicide of the author of this poem. The manuscript was found beside his body. The lines were published in The Chicago Tribune.
HIS regiment came home today,
But Jim, old Jim, he’s still away.
I know, I know, he’s sleeping there
Out on the fields of France somewhere.
And yet, I stood out in the rain,
To watch the boys come home again,
Just wishing that it wasn’t true,
And that Jim would be coming, too.
Yet, all the while, I knew, I knew—