| |
| LED by Wilhelm, as you tell, | |
| God has done extremely well; | |
| You with patronizing nod | |
| Show that you approve of God. | |
| Kaiser, face a question new— | 5 |
| This—does God approve of you? | |
| |
| Broken pledges, treaties torn, | |
| Your first page of war adorn; | |
| We on fouler things must look | |
| Who read further in that book, | 10 |
| Where you did in time of war | |
| All that you in peace forswore, | |
| Where you, barbarously wise, | |
| Bade your soldiers terrorize, | |
| |
| Where you made—the deed was fine— | 15 |
| Women screen your firing line. | |
| Villages burned down to dust, | |
| Torture, murder, bestial lust, | |
| Filth too foul for printer’s ink, | |
| Crime from which the apes would shrink— | 20 |
| Strange the offerings that you press | |
| On the God of Righteousness! | |
| |
| Kaiser, when you’d decorate | |
| Sons or friends who serve your State, | |
| Not that Iron Cross bestow, | 25 |
| But a cross of wood, and so— | |
| So remind the world that you | |
| Have made Calvary anew. | |
| |
| Kaiser, when you’d kneel in prayer | |
| Look upon your hands, and there | 30 |
| Let that deep and awful stain | |
| From the blood of children slain | |
| Burn your very soul with shame, | |
| Till you dare not breathe that Name | |
| That now you glibly advertise— | 35 |
| God as one of your allies. | |
| |
| Impious braggart, you forget; | |
| God is not your conscript yet; | |
| You shall learn in dumb amaze | |
| That His ways are not your ways, | 40 |
| That the mire through which you trod | |
| Is not the high white road of God. | |
| |
| To Whom, whichever way the combat rolls, | |
| We, fighting to the end, commend our souls. | |
| |
