C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Eliot Crawshay-Williams (1879–1962)
Poems of the Great War: An English Soldier’s Testament
I
In this inhuman strife,
I grudge it not if I,
By laying down my life,
Do aught at all to bring
A day of charity,
When pride of lord or king
Unpowerful shall be
To spend the nation’s store,
To spill the nation’s blood;
Whereafter evermore
Humanity’s full flood
Untroubled on shall roll
In a rich tide of peace,
And the world’s wondrous soul
Uncrucified increase.
Merely that lords and kings
Shall say, “We well have striven,
See where our banner flings
Its folds upon the breeze.
Then (thanks, noble sirs, to you),
See how the lands and seas
Have changed their pristine hue.”
On goes the same old game,
With monarchs seeing red
And ministers aflame,
And nations drowning deep
In quarrels not their own
And people called to reap
The woes they have not sown,
Have died despite our hope,
Only to twist again
The old kaleidoscope,
Why, then, by God! we’re sold,
Cheated, and wronged! Betrayed!
Our youth and lives and gold
Wasted—the homes we’d made
Shattered—in folly blind and spite,
By cowardice of mind,
And little men, and light.
The temple we have willed,
With our flag there unfurled,
If rainbow none there shine
Across the seas of woe,
If seed of yours and mine
Through this same hell must go,
Of all who died in vain
(Be they of friend or foe)
Rise and come back again
From peace that knows no end,
From faith that knows not doubt,
To haunt and sear and rend
The men that sent us out.