Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/142

 142

Though kinsmen are the lights that cast the shade,

We look not up, nor see how, side by side,

The high originals of all our pride

In crowned and sceptred brotherhood are throned,

Compassionate of our blindness and our hate

That own the godship but the love disowned.

Ah, let us for a little while abate

The outward roving eye, and seek within

Where spirit unto spirit is allied;

There, in our inmost being, we may win

The joyful vision of the heavenly wise

To see the beauty in each other's eyes. A. E.

WAKE, ye nations, slumbering supine,

Who round enring the European fray!

Heard ye the trumpet sound? "The Day! the Day!

The last that shall on England's Empire shine!

The Parliament that broke the Right Divine

Shall see her realm of reason swept away,

And lesser nations shall the sword obey—

The sword o'er all carve the great world's design!"

So on the English Channel boasts the foe

On whose imperial brow death's helmet nods.

Look where his hosts o'er bloody Belgium go,

And mix a nation's past with blazing sods!

A kingdom's waste! a people's homeless woe!

Man's broken Word, and violated gods!