THE MESSAGE_Hello, Boys!

I have not the gift of vision,

I have not the psychic ear,

And the realms that are called Elysian

I neither see nor hear;

Yet oft when the shadows darken

And the daylight hides its face,

The soul of me seems to hearken

For the truths that speak through space.

They speak to me not through reason,

They speak to me not by word;

Yet my soul would be guilty of treason

If it did not say it had heard.

For Space has a message compelling

To give to the ear of Earth;

And the things which the Silence is telling

In the bosom of God have birth.

Now this is the truth as I hear it—

That ever through good or ill,

The will of the Ruling Spirit

Is moving and ruling still.

In the clutch of the blood-red terror

That holds the world in its might,

The Race is learning its error

And will find its way to the light.

And this is the Truth as I see it—

Whoever cries out for peace,

Must think it, and live it, and _be it_,

And the wars of the world will cease.

Men fight that man may awaken,

And no longer want to kill;

Wars rage, and the heavens are shaken

That man may learn how to be still.

In the silence he finds his Saviour—

The God Who is dwelling within;

And only by Christ-behaviour

Is the soul of him saved from sin.

There is only one Source—no other—

One Light, and each soul is a ray;

And he who would slaughter his brother,

_Himself_ he is seeking to slay.

Now these are the Truths we are learning

Through evils and horrors untold;

For the thought of the race is turning

Away from its methods of old.

And the mind of the race is sated,

With the things that it prized of yore,

And the monster of war is hated,

As never on earth before.

Oh, slow are God’s mills in the grinding,

But they grind exceedingly small;

And slow is man’s soul in the finding,

That he is a part of the All.

Through æons and æons, his story

Is bloody and blackened with crime;

But he will come out into glory

And stand on the summits sublime.

He will stand on the summits of Knowledge,

In the splendour of Light from the Source;

And the methods of church and of college

Will all of them change by his force.

For the creeds that are blind and cruel,

And the teachings by rule and by rod,

Will all be turned into fuel

To light up the pathway to God.

This is the Truth as I hear it—

_The clouds are rolling away_,

_And Spirit will talk with Spirit_

_In the swift approaching day_.

_War from the world shall be driven_,

_From evil shall come forth good_;

_And men shall make ready for Heaven_

_Through living in Brotherhood_.

‘FLOWERS OF FRANCE’

DECORATION POEM FOR SOLDIERS’ GRAVES, TOURS,

FRANCE, MAY 30, 1918

_Flowers of France in the Spring_,

_Your growth is a beautiful thing_;

_But give us your fragrance and bloom_—

_Yea_, _give us your lives in truth_,

_Give us your sweetness and grace_

_To brighten the resting-place_

_Of the flower of manhood and youth_,

_Gone into the dust of the tomb_.

This is the vast stupendous hour of Time,

When nothing counts but sacrifice and faith,

Service and self-forgetfulness. Sublime

And awful are these moments charged with death

And red with slaughter. Yet God’s purpose thrives

In all this holocaust of human lives.

I say God’s purpose thrives. Just in the measure

That men have flung away their lust for gain,

Stopped in their mad pursuit of worldly pleasure,

And boldly faced unprecedented pain

And dangers, without thinking of the cost,

So thrives God’s purpose in the holocaust.

Death is a little thing: all men must die;

But when ideals die, God grieves in Heaven.

Therefore I think it was the reason why

This Armageddon to the world was given.

The Soul of man, forgetful of its birth,

Was losing sight of everything but earth.

Up from these many million graves shall spring,

A shining harvest for the coming race.

An Army of Invisibles shall bring

A glorified lost faith back to its place.

And men shall know there is a higher goal

Than earthly triumphs for the human soul.

They are not dead—they are not dead, I say,

These men whose mortal forms are in the sod.

A grand Advance-Guard marching on its way,

Their Souls move upwards to salute their God!

While to their comrades who are in the strife

They cry, ‘Fight on! Death is the dawn of life.’

We had forgotten all the depth and beauty

And lofty purport of that old true word

Deplaced by pleasure—that old good word _duty_.

Now by its meaning is the whole world stirred.

These men died for it; for it, now, we give,

And sacrifice, and serve, and toil, and live.

From out our hearts had gone a high devotion

For anything. It took a mighty wrath—

Against great evil to wake strong emotion,

And put us back upon the righteous path.

It took a mingled stream of tears and blood

To cut the channel through to Brotherhood.

That word meant nothing on our lips in peace:

We had despoiled it by our castes and classes.

But when this savage carnage finds surcease

A new ideal will unite the masses.

And there shall be True Brotherhood with men—

The Christly Spirit stirring earth again.

For this our men have suffered, fought, and died.

And we who can but dimly see the end

Are guarded by their spirits glorified,

Who help us on our way, while they ascend.

They are not dead—they are not dead, I say,

These men whose graves we decorate to-day.

America and France walk hand in hand;

As one, their hearts beat through the coming years:

One is the aim and purpose of each land,

Baptized with holy water of their tears.

To-day they worship with one faith, and know

Grief’s first Communion in God’s House of Woe.

Great Liberty, the Goddess at our gates,

And great Jeanne d’Arc, are fused into one soul:

A host of Angels on that soul awaits

To lead it up to triumph at the goal.

Along the path of Victory they tread,

Moves the majestic cortège of our dead.