Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/171

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��Robert Norwood

The brilliant Canadian poet and preacher, now Rector of the Memorial Church of St. Paul, Overbrook, Philadelphia. Author of His Lady of the Sonnets, The Witch of Endor, The Piper and the Reed The Modernists etc. Born in Christ Church Rectory, New Ross, Lunenburg county, Nova Scotia, Marcti 27th, 1874, son of the Rev. Joseph W. Norwood and Edith, daughter of Captain Harding. Educated at Coaticook Academy, Quebec; and at King s College, Windsor, M.S., where he gradu ated in Arts in 1897.

A SONG OF BATTLES

OU will not do this thing again!

What thing?

Mistake of owning overmuch :

Great palaces and princely halls,

Gardens of Babylon that hang

High on a many terraced hill,

Created at the cost of slaves

Dead by the thousands; that some queen

Might gaze in rapture of her lord.

Strange how the saddened centuries Stood clothed in garments red with blood Poured from the veins of innocents, Their mothers glad to give them birth, Their fathers driven forth to slay And to be slain on battle fields !

Why? Why?

Because a few men sold their souls

For little heaps of minted gold

Round pieces stamped with Caesar s face

Or Alexander s awful brow

Gold pieces whose possession gives

Command of battle ships and legions armed for enemies,

Raised up because of gold ! gold ! gold !

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