Of the hundreds that liv’d, but wish’d to die
As the enemy rode them o’er.
Now he sees his own cathedral shake
At the foeman’s wanton aim.
The ancient tow’rs with the bullets quake;
The steeples fall, the foundations break,
And the whole is lost in flame.
Up the vicarage lane file the cavalcade,
And the vicar, and daughter, and wife
Scream out in vain for the needed aid
That only a regiment might have made
Ere they lose what is more than life.
Then quick to his brain came manhood’s thought,
As he saw his erring course;
And the vicar his dusty rifle brought
That the foe might at least by one be fought,
And force repaid with force.
One shot — the enemy’s blasting fire
A breach in the wall cuts thro’,
But the vicar replies with his waken’d ire;
Fells one arm’d brute for each fallen spire,
And in blood is born anew.
Two shots — the wife and daughter sink,
Each with a mortal wound;
And the vicar, too madden’d by far to think,
Rushes boldly on to death’s vague brink,
With the manhood he has found.
Three shots — but shots of another kind
The smoky regions rend;
And upon the foeman with rage gone blind,
Like a ceaseless, resistless, avenging wind,
The rescuing troops descend.
The smoke-pall clears, and the vicar’s son
His father’s life has sav’d;
And the vicar looks o’er the ruin done,
Ere the vict’ry by his child was won,
His face with care engrav’d.
The vicar sat in the firelight’s glow,
The volume in his hand,
That brought to his hearth the bitter woe
Which only a husband and father can know,
And truly understand.
With a chasten’d mien he flung the book
To the leaping flames before;
And a breath of sad relief he took
As the pages blacken’d beneath his look —
The fool of Peace no more!
Epilogue
The rev’rend parson, wak’d to man’s estate,
Laments his wife’s and daughter’s common fate.
His martial son in warm embrace enfolds,
And clings the tighter to the child he holds.
His peaceful notions, banish’d in an hour,
Will nevermore his wit or sense devour;
But steep’d in truth, ’tis now his nobler plan
To cure, yet recognise, the faults of man.
Ode for July Fourth, 1917
As Columbia’s brave scions, in anger array’d,
Once defy’d a proud monarch and built a new nation;
‘Gainst their brothers of Britain unsheath’d the sharp blade
That hath ne’er met defeat nor endur’d desecration;
So must we in this hour
Show our valour and pow’r,
And dispel the black perils that over us low’r:
Whilst the sons of Britannia, no longer our foes,
Will rejoice in our triumphs and strengthen our blows!
See the banners of Liberty float in the breeze
That plays light o’er the regions our fathers defended;
Hear the voice of the million resound o’er the leas,
As the deeds of the past are proclaim’d and commended;
And in splendour on high
Where our flags proudly fly,
See the folds we tore down flung again to the sky:
For the Emblem of England, in kinship unfurl’d,
Shall divide with Old Glory the praise of the world!
Bury’d now are the hatreds of subject and King,
And the strife that once sunder’d an Empire hath vanish’d.
With the fame of the Saxon the heavens shall ring
As the vultures of darkness are baffled and banish’d;
And the broad British sea,
Of her enemies free,
Shall in tribute bow gladly, Columbia to thee:
For the friends of the Right, in the field side by side,
Form a fabric of Freedom no hand can divide!
Nemesis
Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.
I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawning,
When the sky was a vaporous flame;
I have seen the dark universe yawning,
Where the black planets roll without aim;
Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.
I had drifted o’er seas without ending,
Under sinister grey-clouded skies
That the many-fork’d lightning is rending,
That resound with hysterical cries;
With the moans of invisible daemons that out of the green waters rise.
I have plung’d like a deer thro’ the arches
Of the hoary primoridal grove,
Where the oaks feel the presence that marches
And stalks on where no spirit dares rove;
And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers thro’ dead branches above.