The sea that kisses France’s shore,
It beats on yours and mine.
Her love and faith and chivalry,
That sparkle as her wine,
With all our faith and all our love
Commingling combine.

The colors of the flag of France
Are ours by hue and hue:
The blazing red of courage—
The white of purpose true,
And constancy and loyalty
Awoven in the blue.

The spirit and the soul of France,
That shatter fetters free,
They came to us in darkest days
To weld our destiny;
And so with sword in hand we come
To pay our debt to Thee.

To pay our debt a hundredfold—
Friend of our new-born years.
To march with you and fight with you,
Till rise the final cheers—
And hand in hand, o’er a grave-strewn land,
We blend our mingled tears.

Where blends our blood as once it did
In days of a long gone
When the Bourbon lilies leapt and gleamed
Among the Stars on high—
And the white and crimson bands of dawn
Rose in the eastern sky.

And the the white and crimson bands of dawn,
And the Stars that glow and glance,
Shall girdle them their armor on,
With buckler, sword, and lance,
And leap to the charge and sweep the field
With the Trois Couleurs of France,

..........

If right is might and Honor lives—
Oh Sister? ’cross the seas—
And Liberty and Justice still
Hold high commune with these;
A four-fold vengeans waits the Hun,
And his iniquities.

THE PACIFIST.

Cowards and curs and traitors,
Fatuous dreaming fools—
Binding us, stripped, for the madman
Nurtured of dastard schools,
Where right of might and who springs first
Are the only known rules.

Well fed, well housed and sleek and smug,
Full pursed and full of pride—
Your fields are green, your lanes are fair
Where peaceful homes abide,
And your children play by sunny streams
That laughing seaward glide.

What Primal Power tells you eat
To the ends of your belly-greed—
What holds your fields with harvests full,
And answers every need—
And bids your bairns play laughingly
With never care or heed?

The answer, Fool, is written large
In words of blazing light—
They are rewards of dwelling in
A Land of kingly might,
That grants you surety and wealth
And guards you, day and night.

And whence, Fool, came its splendid strength—
And why, and how and when?
In a World of strife and reddened knife
Did it rise by tongue and pen?
No, Dolt, but by the strong right arms,
The arms of its fighting men.

And Ye, Ye would sit with folded hands,
Agaze into Heaven’s blue,
With sanctimonious murmurings
Of what the Lord will do;
While your neighbor and your neighbor’s son
Go forth and fight for you.

For you, you cur, and your belly-need—
For your hearth and kith and kin:
For your harvest and your banking-house
Where you shovel the shekels in,
Till the labor has hardened your hands and heart,
And your soul is parchment skin.

Religion cannot cover
A dog whose liver is white.
Your Christ, with righteous anger,
Smote hard to left and right
The usurers. And never said
He was too proud to fight.

When we are another Belgium
And the land with blood is dyed,
And your homes are burned and your women raped,
And ye know that ye have lied—
Mayhap ye will say with your final gasp
That ye are satisfied.

BATTLE HYMN OF 17.

On the entry, in 1917, of the United States into the World War.

Not with vain boasts and mouthings—
Not with jesting light—
But for Duty and Love of Country
Come we in armor dight.

Not for our own advantage—
Not for Adventure’s lust—
Not for the hope of honor—
But a Cause that is high and just.

Not for the praise of our fellow-man,
Or greed or gain or creed,
But for the sight of the suffering eyes
That call us in their need.

(The withering, mad machine-guns
Shall drop us one by one,
Where the red, red streams of No Man’s Land
Gleam ’neath a blood-red sun.)

(The shriek of the spraying shrapnel—
The roar and the blinding glare,
And the gaping crater’s dripping fangs
Shall ope and find us there.)

Not in the strong man’s tyranny
Or the pride of worldly things,
But guarding clean traditions,
Unstained by the hands of kings.

Not with sudden yearning,
But knowing the risks we dare,
We board the waiting galleons
For a Nation brave and fair.

(For a Nation bearing the battle’s brunt—
The strength of the Vandals’ blast—
With an even keel and a steady wheel,
And her Colors nailed to the mast.)

Not with hectic fire,
But weighing the thing we do,
We cross to the coasts of the fighting hosts—
To the France our Fathers knew.

Brothers in blood of old—and now—
Together to hunt and slay,
Till we drive the Beast to his bone-strewn lair—
An eye for an eye—a hair for a hair—
And we leave him broken and bleeding there
Forever and a day.

..........

Not with vain boasts and mouthings—
But in silent, grim parade—
We come, Lord God of Battles,
To the last and great Crusade.