Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/161

 /. Lewis Milligan

They shall return with laughing faces,

Limbs that are lithe ancl hearts new-born;

Yea, we shall see them in old-home places, Lovelier yet in the light of morn.

Dream not they die, though their bodies perish;

Spirits like theirs, so free and brave, Go on to conquer and vitally flourish

Spite of the sword and the grasping grave.

They shall return when the wars are over, When battles are memories dim and far ;

Where guns now stand shall be corn and clover, Flowers shall bloom where the blood-drops are They shall return !

��H

��THE VISION OF ARMAGEDDON

IGH o er the din of these war-shocked days

I rose in a wild ecstatic flight, And down, with an all-embracing gaze,

I looked, and lo ! to my frenzied sight The earth lay stretched like a boundless plain,

Where the nations clashed in a deadly strife, Till the verdant lands and the azure main

Turned red with the wine of human life.

Twas the Armageddon of Right and Wrong,

Where Death flies swift as the lightning s gleam, Where the weak go down before the strong,

Where the things men hold and the things they dream Are flung in the fires of infernal fray,

And purged of their dross in flames of rage, For the purer life of an after day,

And making of men for the Golden Age.

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