Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/173

 Robert Norwood

��T

��O sons and daughters of our country ! keep Inviolate, untarnished, England s name; Watch and be ready, nor afraid to leap Sudden and terrible, like unleashed flame Upon the foe; lest you be forced to join Fools of the unlit lamp and ungirt loin !

��A PLEDGE

HE Ape is at the frontiers of the world, The jungle-lust is flaming from his eyes: And all his brute battalions he has hurled Against the gate of guarded Paradise!

By the passion of the struggle through the night,

Or ever there was music of man s word ;

By the lifting of wide wings to meet the light,

And the song between the hill-tops of a bird;

By the witness of the lily and the vine,

Of the mountain and the valley and the sea,

Let us pledge again the common cup of wine

At the paschal board with Christ of Galilee:

Not to fail earth s aspiration to the star,

Nor forget her primal promise to the sky,

Though the crown upon our forehead be a scar

Though to keep our tryst with Nature we must die!

��H

��THE STREAM

OW many Christs have we two crucified ?

How many prophets have we sawn asunder?

What wild woe have we wrought? How deep, how

wide

The wrong committed? In the sky God s thunder

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