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October, 1918
ACROSS a world where all men grieve | |
| And grieving strive the more, | |
| The great days range like tides and leave | |
| Our dead on every shore. | |
| Heavy the load we undergo, | 5 |
| And our own hands prepare, | |
| If we have parley with the foe, | |
| The load our sons must bear. | |
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| Before we loose the word | |
| That bids new worlds to birth, | 10 |
| Needs must we loosen first the sword | |
| Of Justice upon earth; | |
| Or else all else is vain | |
| Since life on earth began, | |
| And the spent world sinks back again | 15 |
| Hopeless of God and Man. | |
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| A People and their King | |
| Through ancient sin grown strong, | |
| Because they feared no reckoning | |
| Would set no bound to wrong; | 20 |
| But now their hour is past, | |
| And we who bore it find | |
| Evil Incarnate held at last | |
| To answer to mankind. | |
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| For agony and spoil | 25 |
| Of nations beat to dust, | |
| For poisoned air and tortured soil | |
| And cold, commanded lust, | |
| And every secret woe | |
| The shuddering waters saw— | 30 |
| Willed and fulfilled by high and low— | |
| Let them relearn the Law. | |
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| That when the dooms are read, | |
| Not high nor low shall say:— | |
| “My haughty or my humble head | 35 |
| Has saved me in this day.” | |
| That, till the end of time, | |
| Their remnant shall recall | |
| Their fathers’ old, confederate crime | |
| Availed them not at all. | 40 |
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| That neither schools nor priests, | |
| Nor Kings may build again | |
| A people with the heart of beasts | |
| Made wise concerning men. | |
| Whereby our dead shall sleep | 45 |
| In honour, unbetrayed, | |
| And we in faith and honour keep | |
| That peace for which they paid. | |
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