Page:Battle-retrospect, and other poems - Wilder - 1923.djvu/20

 That generation unto generation still

Contrives to will.

Errors, obscenities and passions breed,

With germs of violence rife,

As in a culture fitted to that end

In human life,

Nor need man to their breeding his impulsion lend.

Then, fallen foe, and friend,

Sleep,

Sleep in repose,

And you, you suffering mother, cease to weep.

What though we late were foes?

We fought in nightmare, as in dreams we live;

Best to forgive.

Aspiring howsoever, you, or I,

The great world weaves its tentacles of ill

Into our hearts, the solidarity

Of mortal evil claims us 'gainst our will,

And with it sinning, with it we must die.

Yet those who in the world-old process caught

Bring thither self-renunciation, aught

Of loftier aim, of loftier ideal,

Of loftier thought,

And bear the common curse, the shared ordeal,

The common retribution, undeserved,

These in all lands, all times, all causes, these

That law by innocence appease;

By their sublime attractiveness they win

The world from its fatality of sin,

And from the common lot

Desiring no exemption,

Their blamelessness with mighty power is fraught

When joined with pain,

For so Redemption,

Redemption lifts its mighty cross again!

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