  The ghostly blood of thee is in my veins, Back through the centuries of death and birth, Sometime I thrilled with thy gigantic pains, My kin lie somewhere covered with thine earth. And ever as in dreams I seem to see Those streets and people with their colours cold; Thou hast the singing hungers of the sea, The tides of restless passion ages old. I know thy humours and their contradiction, I know thy fevers and hallucinations, I see beneath the painted mask of fiction Thy face of fierce and weary exaltations. And art thou come to gaze with wakened eyes Into the sick world's travail and her grief, Dost thou from thy long battling surmise The end of battle and the world's relief? While we are creeping in our crooked ways Along the crumbling roads of worn-out creeds Where Ignorance walks royally through days That smell of death, decay and bloody deeds. While we still cry to God for strength to kill, Reminding Him that Britain rules the waves, And grind young bones for the commercial mill, And build munition works among the graves. Still crying "Honour," "Country" and "The Flag," "The last heroic fight in Freedom's name!" Though Kings make mouths at Kings, and Prelates brag— They boast of murder and they reek of shame!... Thou that hast touched the mystic wounds of God, And strewn with broken hearts the Virgin's feet, Feeling beneath the burden and the rod His justice and Her pity in the street. Justice and Pity, crying in the wind— We only hear the guns that never cease, The flapping of our flags has made us blind! We may not see the sacred gods of peace. But thou dost build fanatic temples for them, And thou dost pave the road with sanity, And all the train of bitter ghosts adore them, Who died to puff a monarch's vanity. I hear thy orchestras of holy cheers, The drum that life has snatched away from death, And all the sighing rhythm of thy tears, And the brave laughter of thy trumpet-breath. Peace! But a cynic whispered in my ear How kings like worms still wrangled for a crown That lay amid the dust—and I could hear A hum of money-changing in the town. I feared that afterwards, when all is won, We shall forget the meaning of thy deed— And man will creep as he has always done Along the little gutters of his greed. 1917 How deeply nurtured is your foolishness, Calling destruction great and slaughter brave, Making large triumph of a little grave, Imperial purple of a mourning dress, The gun an emblem of your godliness— A fluttering ribbon or a banner's wave, A medal or a bayonet, or rave Of singing, marching in the forward press Of hatred to the banging of a band; Your country's honour and the world's release. Are they not strong in courage who withstand The armies of your folly and shall cease To tarnish with spilt life their motherland? Cowards—or martyrs—crucified for peace. 1917 Of all who died in silence far away Where sympathy was busy with other things, Busy with worlds, inventing how to slay, Troubled with rights and wrongs and governments and kings. The little dead who knew so large a love, Whose lives were sweet unto themselves a shepherding Of hopes, ambitions, wonders in a drove Over the hills of time, that now are graves for burying. Of all the tenderness that flowed to them, A milky way streaming from out their mother's breast, Stars were they to her night, and she the stem From which they flowered—now barren and left unblessed. Of all the sparkling kisses that they gave Spangling a secret radiance on adoring hands, Now stifled in the darkness of a grave With kiss of loneliness and death's embracing bands. No more!—And we, the mourners, dare not wear The black that folds our hearts in secrecy of pain, But must don purple and bright standards bear, Vermilion of our honour, a bloody train. We dare not weep who must be brave in battle— "Another death—another day—another inch of land— The dead are cheering and the ghost drums rattle" ... The dead are deaf and dumb and cannot understand.... Of all who died in darkness far away Nothing is left of them but LOVE, who triumphs now, His arms held crosswise to the budding day, The passion-red roses clustering his brow. 1917 And afterwards, when honour has made good, And all you think you fight for shall take place, A late rejoicing to a crippled race; The bulldog's teeth relax and snap for food, The eagles fly to their forsaken brood, Within the ravaged nest. When no disgrace Shall spread a blush across the haggard face Of anxious Pride, already flushed with blood. In victory will you have conquered Hate, And stuck old Folly with a bayonet And battered down the hideous prison gate? Or will the fatted gods be gloried yet, Glutted with gold and dust and empty state, The incense of our anguish and our sweat? 1917 Pity the slain that laid away their lives, Pity the prisoners mangled with gyves, Thin little children and widowed wives, And the broken soldier who survives. Pity the woman whose body was sold For a little bread or a little gold, And a little fire to keep out the cold, So tired, and fearful of growing old. Pity the people in the grey street Before the dawn trooping with listless feet Down to their work in the dust and the heat, For a little bread and a little meat. Pity the criminal sentenced to die, Loving life so, with the world in his eye, In his ears and his heart, with the passionate cry Of love that will call when he may not reply. Pity them all, the imperative faces That peer through the dark where we sleep in our laces, Where we skulk among cushions in opulent places, With indolent postures and frivolous graces. Eyes that prick the darkness, fingers thin Tearing at hypocrisy, and Sin That batters the door and staggers in.... The streets surround with clamour and din, Drowning our flutes, till the cries of the city Flurry us, flutter us, force us to pity, Force us to sigh and arrange a committee, Tea-party charity danced to a ditty.... The scarlet ribbons flutter and wave, A rebel flag on a rebel grave, But to us the strong alone are brave, And only the rich are worthy to save! Yet who shall blame us, plaited and curled, Where silk banners fly and the red flags are furled, Flags that blow where the dead are hurled, Tattered and dripping with blood of the world! 1918 |
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