Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/174

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O world grown sick with butchery and manifold distress!

O broken Belgium robbed of all save grief and ghastliness!

Should Prussian power enslave the world and arrogance prevail,

Let chaos come, let Moloch rule, and Christ give place to Baal. Robert Grant

LL night in a cottage far

Death and I had waged our war

Where, at such a bitter cost,

Death had won and I had lost;

And as I climbed up once more

From that poor, tear-darkened door,

From the valley seemed to rise,

In one cry, all human cries—

Yea, from such a mortal woe

Earth seemed at its overthrow,

And the very deeps unlocked

Of all anguished ages, mocked

In that they beheld at last

This their self-sown holocaust,

And their latest, loveliest sons

Shattered by ten thousand guns.

Then the friend who said to me,

Naught's so brief as agony,

Seemed to stand revealed and blind,

And a foe to humankind,

And I cried, Why very Spring

Shudders at this fearful thing,

And withholds her kindling sun,

Seeing Life and Grief are one.

Nay, said he, but in all earth

There's one power, and that is Birth,

And the starkest human pain

Is but joy being born again,