Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/98

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What seek we now, and hazard all on the aim?

In the heart of man is the undiscovered earth

Whose hope's our compass; sweet with glorious passion

Of men's goodwill; a world to forge and fashion

Worthy the things we have seen and brought to birth.

Taps of the Drum! Now once again they beat:

And the answer comes; a continent arms. Dread,

Pity, and Grief, there is no escape. The call

Is the call of the risen Dead.

Terrible year of the nations' trampling feet!

An angel has blown his trumpet over all

From the ends of the earth, from East to uttermost West,

Because of the soul of man, that shall not fail,

That will not make refusal, or turn, or quail,

No, nor for all calamity, stay its quest.

And here, here too, is the New World, born of pain

In destiny-spelling hours. The old world breaks

Its mould, and life runs fierce and fluid, a stream

That floods, dissolves, re-makes.

Each pregnant moment, charged to its extreme,

Quickens unending future, and all's vain

But the onward mind, that dares the oncoming years

And takes their storm, a master. Life shall then

Transfigure Time with yet more marvellous men.

Hail to the sunrise! Hail to the Pioneers! Laurence Binyon

FTEN I think of you, Jimmy Doane,—

You who, light-heartedly, came to my house

Three autumns, to shoot and to eat a grouse!

As I sat apart in this quiet room,

My mind was full of the horror of war

And not with the hope of a visitor.