Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/27

 Grace Blackburn

In the mute, attentive, listening earth But hears the resound of it Not a king s palace sick of old splendour, Dying of exquisite ennui, that does not tremble. The gods meet the gods! Chaos has come and destruc tion!

Despotisms and Dynasties;

Diplomacy with its secrets soft as a silken string,

Subtle for binding; Oppression and Usance;

Tinsel-tricked Superstition, its priests and its profits ;

Close-fisted Atheism whose bread is a stone ;

Lawyer-pack and the blustering breed of Office ;

Fraudulence and Ownership

The ownership of lands and of bodies ;

Bodies of men for the gain in the sweat of them,

Bodies of women for the lusts they feed



Foul old gods, foully worshipped,

See the fire of their fury scattered!

The flame of it rises to heaven, the earth is lurid :

The gods against the gods !

They kill!

They go down in the killing!

Now War itself War that is snake and eagle in one, Cruel and cunning War makes encounter with Death ! And Death hails the Leader of Hosts, the War Lord, Under a strange new mask, more cruel and cunning Than snake or the eagle a monster fatted on millions, A spectre compounded of science and spite, This Death of the Twilight of gods. Gone the transcendence, the state, the white wonder This Death is the churl of a shambles

Blood-letting in buskins; a butcher in arms!

And Death strangles his henchman

The Twilight, the Doom of the gods is accomplished:

War, too, that was lusty, is dead !

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