Edith Matilda Thomas: Verses about Red

The battle-smoke still fouled the day,
With bright disaster flaming through;
Unchecked, absorbed, she held her way—
The whispering death still past her flew.


A cross of red was on her sleeve;
And here she stayed, the wound to bind,
And there, the fighting soul relieve,
That strove its Unknown Peace to find.


A cross of red . . . yet one has dreamed
Of her he loved and left in tears;
But unto dying sight she seemed
A visitant from other spheres.


The whispering death—it nearer drew,
It holds her heart in strict arrest . .
And where was one, are crosses two—
A crimson cross is on her breast!

Apple-green west and an orange bar,
And the crystal eye of a lone, one star . . .
And, "Child, take the shears and cut what you will,
Frost to-night -- so clear and dead-still."

Then, I sally forth, half sad, half proud,
And I come to the velvet, imperial crowd,
The wine-red, the gold, the crimson, the pied, --
The dahlias that reign by the garden-side.

The dahlias I might not touch till to-night!
A gleam of the shears in the fading light,
And I gathered them all, -- the splendid throng,
And in one great sheaf I bore them along.

. . . . .

In my garden of Life with its all-late flowers
I heed a Voice in the shrinking hours:
"Frost to-night -- so clear and dead-still" . . .
Half sad, half proud, my arms I fill.

Ride through the land, Vigilantes, ride!
From this bound of the East where the inrolling tide
With more than the red of the sunrise is dyed,
As crimson the foam is borne to our strand!
Ride!

Draw not the rein, and make not your stand,
Till ye come to the slumbering heart of the land:
Tell them who sleep—so loth to awake,
All unprepared for the storm that must break—
Tell them, Humanity's all is at stake!
Tell them, ''Tis Freedom that falls in the breach!'

If they murmur, adream, 'Our peace, we beseech—
The peoples at war—they speak not our speech!'
Ye will say, 'If ye sleep, then sleep—to your shame!
Freedom's no alien, but one and the same;
Wake ye, and arm ye, in her great name!'


Ride, Vigilantes, lifting your light,
Ride through the day, and ride through the night,
Searching out Men of Valor and Might!—
Ride!