Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/34

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��Minnie Hallowell Bowen

The highest in man answered then awoke The inner things of life ! War s strange dismay Dimmed not the flame that made a holy ground As if the spirit pierced the crumbling clay Hearing the Resurrection trumpet sound!

THE DAWN

LOW, loveliness of morn across the hills!

Waken the dew-drenched earth ! These drops are red !

The older day is gone its dreams are dead

Lost in the darkness. Long- forgotten ills

Left in the upward climb raise horrid heads

From out primeval slime their threatening fangs

Menace the soul. The lonely star that sheds

Heaven s radiance, pale in the deep ether hangs,

Promise of day to be. Blow winds of morn!

Cleanse the sick earth from foulness and dismay!

The flowers forget to bloom no roses blow

Only the Rose of Sacrifice is born

Rooted in sorrow, like the stars aglow

Is this the Night ? Behold ! it is the Day !

AFTERWARDS

FTER this life God s life! The battlefield Leaves pitiful wrecks poor torn bodies men Pulsing with warm life once alive and then After that lightning stroke no earthly shield Can ward from any of us dead and cold Still without comfort voiceless set apart From touch of love. That agony is old As life and death, but new with every heart.

Yet, in what glory went the parting soul In that high hour of sacrifice to meet Its Maker! In what holiness the feet Swept upward to the Great Light of the Goal That followed Calvary s immortal sign, The crimson token, deathless and divine!

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