Page:More songs by the fighting men, soldier poets, second series, 1917.djvu/139

R. Howard Spring Earth stopped her breathing, knowing then

The seed of God sown among men.

We rocked the steeple on Easter day

When Christ the Spirit broke the clay

In glory of yellow daffodils

And holy laughter of dancing rills.

O men who tear us from our place on high

To make us messengers of hate and death,

Thus you uproot the holy lily-flower

And hug a dry and tinkling husk that holds

No spirit essential and no soul of grace.

Thus you tear out the heart from Sharon's rose,

And only thorns remain to make a crown

To lacerate afresh the brow of Christ.

The tower remains, the shell that th' outward eye

May see and reverence as a God's abode.

But O ye happy ones whose inward eye

Not unillumined is, pass by and say:

Here lies the clay inanimate by fire;

Here stands the empty stall that has no choir;

Here die the lives from which the God has fled.

Behold! The Christ steals by with bleeding head. 135