Peace,

June 28th, 1919

From the tennis lawn you can hear the guns going,
Twenty miles away,
Telling the people of the home counties
That the peace was signed to-day.
To-night there'll be feasting in the city;
They will drink deep and eat —
Keep peace the way you planned you would keep it
(If we got the Boche beat).
Oh, your plan and your word, they are broken,
For you neither dine nor dance;
And there's no peace so quiet, so lasting,
As the peace you keep in France.
You'll be needing no Covenant of Nations
To hold your peace intact.
It does not hang on the close guarding
Of a frail and wordy pact.
When ours screams, shattered and driven,
Dust down the storming years,
Yours will stand stark, like a grey fortress,
Blind to the storm's tears.
Our peace ... your peace ... I see neither.
They are a dream, and a dream.
I only see you laughing on the tennis lawn;
And brown and alive you seem,
As you stoop over the tall red foxglove,
(It flowers again this year)
And imprison within a freckled bell
A bee, wild with fear....
* * * * *
Oh, you cannot hear the noisy guns going:
You sleep too far away.
It is nothing to you, who have your own peace,
That our peace was signed to-day.

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