John Le Gay Brereton: Verses about Fire

Out of the pregnant darkness, where from fire
To glimmering fire the watchword leaps,
The dirge floats up from those who build the pyre
High and still higher
That yet shall blaze across the verminous deeps.

Farewell, O brother-heart,
Yet we shall not forget;
Though hand from hand must part,
Your hope is with us yet.
The clank of the swaggerer's sword
And clink of the grasper's gold
Are not so loud as the lover's word
In a thousand echoes rolled.

The lords of the tottering order sit and plot,
With cunning courtesy haggling still:
The insistent chorus cannot be forgot
Its words are shot
Like summoning rockets from the eastern hill.

You, it was you who showed
How Murder made his pact
In busy Greed's abode,
Preparing for the act.
To save the fatherland
They bade your comrades die,
And full in their path you took your stand
To kill the patriot lie.

Now, lest their flags and bags be lost in flame.
The desperate pair have summoned those
Whose love is moderate and whose life is tame
To quench in shame
The light that streams where wind of warning blows.

The ranks of freedom swell,
The flag of love rolls out:
The efficient ranks of hell
Close up in deadly doubt.
Moulded in battle's mire,
The bullet found its mark;
A living spirit, winged with fire,
Flares homeward from the dark.

From every quarter we,
Who bent the trembling knee
And cowered or grovelled prostrate day and night,
Now come once more to sing
A dirge before thee, King,
Once more with earnest heart to do thee right.

Have we not hailed thee God?
Our weary feet have trod
The vasty barren sands and treacherous ice,
With many a bitter cry,
To pile thine altar high
With pallid human hearts in sacrifice.

We hated thee and came
With eyes of shifty shame,
With heavy steel above the craven breast,
Yet evermore we did
The ill thy servants bid,
For everywhere thy might was manifest.

At thy sibilant word
We were filled with distrust,
And we glared on each other,
All horribly stirred
Against sister and brother;
Our green hopes were wilted and riven, our red-running blood was as dust.

And a foul poison ran
Through the veins of the world,
And we waited and wondered.
By magical ban
We were cruelly sundered,
Then a maniac hatred upcaught us and deep into hell we were hurled.

We have crept to thee, God,
In the day of thy wrath,
We have wept, we have fasted,
We have crimsoned the sod
That thy worship has blasted,
And have seen thee stalk pale and triumphant where nations fell flat in thy path.

Yet out of the dust and the flame,
The squalor and muddle of crime,
A red waving blossom there came
And a scent on the tempest of time.
Heroic and splendid, we threw
Our lives to be oil in the fire,
But a marvel of fellowship grew
As the blaze bickered broader and higher,
And the soul of a people stood up, and spoke to us all from the pyre.

And lo, we are come to thy shrine,
O God, but we ask for no grace,
For our hearts are made glad with a wine
That is death to the craven and base,
And thy shrine shall be burnt for our mirth
And thine altar be turned to thy bier,
For, if Love be our Lord upon earth,
What corner is left for thee here?
The veil of thy temple is rent—and behold, thou hast vanished, O Fear!