I.

The beast exultant spreads the nostril wide,
Snuffing a sickly hate-enkindling scent;
Proud of his rage, on sudden carnage bent,
He leaps, and flings the helpless guard aside.
Again, again the hills are gapped and dyed,
Again the hearts of waiting women spent.
Is there no cooler pathway to content?
Can we not heal the insanity of pride?

Silence the crackle and thunder of battling guns,
And drive your men to strategy of peace;
Crush ere its birth the hell-begotten crime;
Still there's a war that no true warrior shuns,
That knows no mercy, looks for no surcease,
But ghastlier battles, victories more sublime.

II.

Envy has slid in silence to its hole,
And Peace is basking where the workers meet,
And fire has purged the fever of the street
Where raucous tradesmen grinned and gave and stole.
Yet louder now the tides of battle roll,
With cheer or sob of charge or stern retreat,
And sullen thud and rumble of cannon beat
About the heights and passes of the soul.

Not only that amid the hush we hear
The sounds that once were blurred by market cries,
Or classes wrangling in affairs of state:
But forces now set free from sordid fear
No longer work as Mammon's murdering spies,
But storm the very citadels of hate.

The War After The War

I.
Yonder, with eyes that tears, not distance, dim,
With ears the wide world's thickness cannot daunt,
We see tumultuous miseries that haunt
The night's dead watches, hear the battle hymn
Of ruin shrieking through the music grim,
Where the red spectre straddles, long and gaunt,
Spitting across the seas his hideous taunt
At those who nurse at home the unwounded limb.

What shall we say, who, drawing indolent breath,
Mark the quick pant of those who, full of hate,
Drive home the steel or loose the shrieking shell,
Heroes or Huns, who smite the grin of death
And laugh or curse beneath the blows of fate,
Swept madly to the thudding heart of hell?

II.
O peace, be still! Let no drear whirlwind sweep
Our souls about the vault, that groans or yells
In travail of the brood of Fear, and swells
Stupendous with new monsters of the deep.
This is no day to wring the hands and weep,
No hour for hopeless tolling and clash of bells.
Faith is no faith if god or demon quells
One hope or drugs it to uneasy sleep.

What you have shed man's blood for, fight for still
In world-wide conflict, joining hand with hand;
Hate fear and hatred and the seed thereof,
And, since you have struck for Freedom, do her will
And smash the barriers parting land from land,
Unfaltering armies of immortal love.

Hymn To The God Of War

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!