Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/158

 158

Burn your very soul with shame,

Till you dare not breathe that Name

That now you glibly advertise—

God as one of your allies.

Impious braggart, you forget;

God is not your conscript yet;

You shall learn in dumb amaze

That His ways are not your ways,

That the mire through which you trod

Is not the high white road of God.

To Whom, whichever way the combat rolls,

We, fighting to the end, commend our souls. Barry Pain

IGHT green of grass and richer green of bush

Slope upwards to the darkest green of fir;

How still! How deathly still! And yet the hush

Shivers and trembles with some subtle stir,

Some far-off throbbing, like a muffled drum,

Beaten in broken rhythm over sea,

To play the last funereal march of some

Who die to-day that Europe may be free.

The deep-blue heaven, curving from the green,

Spans with its shimmering arch the flowery zone;

In all God's earth there is no gentler scene,

And yet I hear that awesome monotone;

Above the circling midge's piping shrill,

And the long droning of the questing bee,

Above all sultry summer sounds, it still

Mutters its ceaseless menaces to me.

And as I listen all the garden fair

Darkens to plains of misery and death,

And looking past the roses I see there

Those sordid furrows, with the rising breath