Page:Battle-retrospect, and other poems - Wilder - 1923.djvu/17

 ODE IN A GERMAN CEMETERY

Where Many Victims of the Great War Were Interred.

grows chastened in these groves of death,

And clamorous recrimination hushed,

Our pain disarmed by pain,

We can but leave upon these graves the wreath

Our mortal foes by mortal visitation crushed

Have woven for their slain.

Still to this day,

Driven by their bitterness, they come to pray

And kneeling in the wind-blown grass

Grope vainly for relief,

And as I pass

Rise in distressed confusion and sore grief.

What did these know of empire's sordid ends,

Markets and routes and ancient rivalries?

Balance of power and dark expediencies,

Reasons of state,

The vain hallucinations of the great?

Why should these make amends

For others' wrongs?

What guilt for all this ruin here belongs?

Or if some taint of envy or of hate

Were theirs, yet even so,

Which is the greater misery, sin or woe?

Muse on these mute inscriptions, each of which

Stands for a life past divination rich

In poignant exploitations

And eager explorations

Of its allotted freehold in the Day;

Rich in those naïve essays of the heart,

Forlorn, confiding gestures

That of this dark enigma make assay,

And tendril-like adventures 11