For we're going by-by to thy papa Michel,
But I'll not say where for fear thou wilt tell,
Little pigeon of France!
"Six days' leave and a year between!
But what would you have? In six days clean,
Heaven was made," said Franceline,
"Heaven and France."
She came to the town of the nameless name,
To the marching troops in the street she came,
And she held high her boy like a taper flame
Burning for France.
Fresh from the trenches and gray with grime,
Silent they march like a pantomime;
"But what need of music? My heart beats time--
_Vive la France!_"
His regiment comes. Oh, then where is he?
"There is dust in my eyes, for I cannot see,--
Is that my Michel to the right of thee,
Soldier of France?"
Then out of the ranks a comrade fell,--
"Yesterday--'t was a splinter of shell--
And he whispered thy name, did thy poor Michel,
Dying for France."
The tread of the troops on the pavement throbbed
Like a woman's heart of its last joy robbed,
As she lifted her boy to the flag, and sobbed:
"_Vive la France!_"
_Charlotte Holmes Crawford_
THE SOUL OF JEANNE D'ARC
_She came not into the Presence as a martyred saint might come,
Crowned, white-robed and adoring, with very reverence dumb,--_
_She stood as a straight young soldier, confident, gallant, strong,
Who asks a boon of his captain in the sudden hush of the drum._
She said: "Now have I stayed too long in this my place of bliss,
With these glad dead that, comforted, forget what sorrow is
Upon that world whose stony stairs they climbed to come to this.
"But lo, a cry hath torn the peace wherein so long I stayed,
Like a trumpet's call at Heaven's wall from a herald unafraid,--
A million voices in one cry, '_Where is the Maid, the Maid?_'
"I had forgot from too much joy that olden task of mine,
But I have heard a certain word shatter the chant divine,
Have watched a banner glow and grow before mine eyes for sign.
"I would return to that my land flung in the teeth of war,
I would cast down my robe and crown that pleasure me no more,
And don the armor that I knew, the valiant sword I bore.
"And angels militant shall fling the gates of Heaven wide,
And souls new-dead whose lives were shed like leaves on war's red tide
Shall cross their swords above our heads and cheer us as we ride,
"For with me goes that soldier saint, Saint Michael of the sword,
And I shall ride on his right side, a page beside his lord,
And men shall follow like swift blades to reap a sure reward.
"Grant that I answer this my call, yea, though the end may be
The naked shame, the biting flame, the last, long agony;
I would go singing down that road where fagots wait for me.
"Mine be the fire about my feet, the smoke above my head;
So might I glow, a torch to show the path my heroes tread;
_My Captain! Oh, my Captain, let me go back!_" she said.
_Theodosia Garrison_
O GLORIOUS FRANCE
You have become a forge of snow-white fire,
A crucible of molten steel, O France!
Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
They pass through meteor changes with a song
Which to all islands and all continents
Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,
Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child,
Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power,
Nor many days spent in a chosen work,
Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme
Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths
Of seventy years.
These are not all of life,
O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder
Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead
Clog the ensanguined ice. But life to these
Prophetic and enraptured souls is vision,
And the keen ecstasy of fated strife,
And divination of the loss as gain,
And reading mysteries with brightened eyes
In fiery shock and dazzling pain before
The orient splendour of the face of Death,
As a great light beside a shadowy sea;
And in a high will's strenuous exercise,
Where the warmed spirit finds its fullest strength
And is no more afraid, and in the stroke
Of azure lightning when the hidden essence
And shifting meaning of man's spiritual worth
And mystical significance in time
Are instantly distilled to one clear drop
Which mirrors earth and heaven.
This is life
Flaming to heaven in a minute's span
When the breath of battle blows the smouldering spark.
And across these seas
We who cry Peace and treasure life and cling
To cities, happiness, or daily toil
For daily bread, or trail the long routine
Of seventy years, taste not the terrible wine
Whereof you drink, who drain and toss the cup
Empty and ringing by the finished feast;
Or have it shaken from your hand by sight
Of God against the olive woods.
As Joan of Arc amid the apple trees
With sacred joy first heard the voices, then
Obeying plunged at Orleans in a field
Of spears and lived her dream and died in fire,
Thou, France, hast heard the voices and hast lived
The dream and known the meaning of the dream,
And read its riddle: how the soul of man
May to one greatest purpose make itself
A lens of clearness, how it loves the cup
Of deepest truth, and how its bitterest gall
Turns sweet to soul's surrender.
And you say:
Take days for repetition, stretch your hands
For mocked renewal of familiar things:
The beaten path, the chair beside the window,
The crowded street, the task, the accustomed sleep,
And waking to the task, or many springs
Of lifted cloud, blue water, flowering fields--
The prison-house grows close no less, the feast
A place of memory sick for senses dulled
Down to the dusty end where pitiful Time
Grown weary cries Enough!
_Edgar Lee Masters_
TO FRANCE
Those who have stood for thy cause when the dark was around thee,
Those who have pierced through the shadows and shining have found thee,
Those who have held to their faith in thy courage and power,
Thy spirit, thy honor, thy strength for a terrible hour,
Now can rejoice that they see thee in light and in glory,
Facing whatever may come as an end to the story
In calm undespairing, with steady eyes fixed on the morrow--
The morn that is pregnant with blood and with death and with sorrow.
And whether the victory crowns thee, O France the eternal,
Or whether the smoke and the dusk of a nightfall infernal
Gather about thee, and us, and the foe; and all treasures
Run with the flooding of war into bottomless measures--
Fall what befalls: in this hour all those who are near thee
And all who have loved thee, they rise and salute and revere thee!
_Herbert Jones_
PLACE DE LA CONCORDE
AUGUST 14, 1914
[Since the bombardment of Strasburg, August 14, 1870, her statue in
Paris, representing Alsace, has been draped in mourning by the French
people.]
Near where the royal victims fell
In days gone by, caught in the swell
Of a ruthless tide
Of human passion, deep and wide:
There where we two
A Nation's later sorrow knew--
To-day, O friend! I stood
Amid a self-ruled multitude
That by nor sound nor word
Betrayed how mightily its heart was stirred,
A memory Time never could efface--
A memory of Grief--
Like a great Silence brooded o'er the place;
And men breathed hard, as seeking for relief
From an emotion strong
That would not cry, though held in check too long.
One felt that joy drew near--
A joy intense that seemed itself to fear--
Brightening in eyes that had been dull,
As all with feeling gazed
Upon the Strasburg figure, raised
Above us--mourning, beautiful!
Then one stood at the statue's base, and spoke--
Men needed not to ask what word;
Each in his breast the message heard,
Writ for him by Despair,
That evermore in moving phrase
Breathes from the Invalides and Père Lachaise--
Vainly it seemed, alas!
But now, France looking on the image there,
Hope gave her back the lost Alsace.
A deeper hush fell on the crowd:
A sound--the lightest--seemed too loud
(Would, friend, you had been there!)
As to that form the speaker rose,
Took from her, fold on fold,
The mournful crape, gray-worn and old,
Her, proudly, to disclose,
And with the touch of tender care
That fond emotion speaks,
'Mid tears that none could quite command,
Placed the Tricolor in her hand,
And kissed her on both cheeks!
_Florence Earle Coates_
TO FRANCE
What is the gift we have given thee, Sister?
What is the trust we have laid in thy hand?
Hearts of our bravest, our best, and our dearest,
Blood of our blood we have sown in thy land.
What for all time will the harvest be, Sister?
What will spring up from the seed that is sown?
Freedom and peace and goodwill among Nations,
Love that will bind us with love all our own.
Bright is the path, that is opening before us,
Upward and onward it mounts through the night;
Sword shall not sever the bonds that unite us
Leading the world to the fullness of light.
Sorrow hath made thee more beautiful, Sister,
Nobler and purer than ever before;
We who are chastened by sorrow and anguish
Hail thee as sister and queen evermore.
_Frederick George Scott_
_QUI VIVE?_
_Qui vive?_ Who passes by up there?
Who moves--what stirs in the startled air?
What whispers, thrills, exults up there?
_Qui vive?_
"The Flags of France."
What wind on a windless night is this,
That breathes as light as a lover's kiss,
That blows through the night with bugle notes,
That streams like a pennant from a lance,
That rustles, that floats?
"The Flags of France."
What richly moves, what lightly stirs,
Like a noble lady in a dance,
When all men's eyes are in love with hers
And needs must follow?
"The Flags of France."
What calls to the heart--and the heart has heard,
Speaks, and the soul has obeyed the word,
Summons, and all the years advance,
And the world goes forward with France--with France?
Who called?
"The Flags of France."
What flies--a glory, through the night,
While the legions stream--a line of light,
And men fall to the left and fall to the right,
But _they_ fall not?
"The Flags of France."
_Qui vive?_ Who comes? What approaches there?
What soundless tumult, what breath in the air
Takes the breath in the throat, the blood from the heart?
In a flame of dark, to the unheard beat
Of an unseen drum and fleshless feet,
Without glint of barrel or bayonets' glance,
They approach--they come. _Who_ comes? (Hush! Hark!)
_"Qui vive?"_
"The Flags of France."
Uncover the head and kneel--kneel down,
A monarch passes, without a crown,
Let the proud tears fall but the heart beat high:
The Greatest of All is passing by,
On its endless march in the endless Plan:
"_Qui vive?_"
"The Spirit of Man."
"O Spirit of Man, pass on! Advance!"
And they who lead, who hold the van?
Kneel down!
The Flags of France.
_Grace Ellery Channing_
_Paris, 1917_
TO THE BELGIANS
O Race that Caesar knew,
That won stern Roman praise,
What land not envies you
The laurel of these days?
You built your cities rich
Around each towered hall,--
Without, the statued niche,
Within, the pictured wall.
Your ship-thronged wharves; your marts
With gorgeous Venice vied.
Peace and her famous arts
Were yours: though tide on tide
Of Europe's battle scourged
Black field and reddened soil,
From blood and smoke emerged
Peace and her fruitful toil.
Yet when the challenge rang,
"The War-Lord comes; give room!"
Fearless to arms you sprang
Against the odds of doom.
Like your own Damien
Who sought that leper's isle
To die a simple man
For men with tranquil smile,
So strong in faith you dared
Defy the giant, scorn
Ignobly to be spared,
Though trampled, spoiled, and torn,
And in your faith arose
And smote, and smote again,
Till those astonished foes
Reeled from their mounds of slain,
The faith that the free soul,
Untaught by force to quail,
Through fire and dirge and dole
Prevails and shall prevail.
Still for your frontier stands
The host that knew no dread,
Your little, stubborn land's
Nameless, immortal dead.
_Laurence Binyon_
BELGIUM
_La Belgique ne regrette rien_
Not with her ruined silver spires,
Not with her cities shamed and rent,
Perish the imperishable fires
That shape the homestead from the tent.
Wherever men are staunch and free,
There shall she keep her fearless state,
And homeless, to great nations be
The home of all that makes them great.
_Edith Wharton_
TO BELGIUM
Champion of human honour, let us lave
Your feet and bind your wounds on bended knee.
Though coward hands have nailed you to the tree
And shed your innocent blood and dug your grave,
Rejoice and live! Your oriflamme shall wave--
While man has power to perish and be free--
A golden flame of holiest Liberty,
Proud as the dawn and as the sunset brave.
Belgium, where dwelleth reverence for right
Enthroned above all ideals; where your fate
And your supernal patience and your might
Most sacred grow in human estimate,
You shine a star above this stormy night
Little no more, but infinitely great.
_Eden Phillpotts_
TO BELGIUM IN EXILE
[Lines dedicated to one of her priests, by whose words they were
prompted.]
Land of the desolate, Mother of tears,
Weeping your beauty marred and torn,
Your children tossed upon the spears,
Your altars rent, your hearths forlorn,
Where Spring has no renewing spell,
And Love no language save a long Farewell!
Ah, precious tears, and each a pearl,
Whose price--for so in God we trust
Who saw them fall in that blind swirl
Of ravening flame and reeking dust--
The spoiler with his life shall pay,
When Justice at the last demands her Day.
O tried and proved, whose record stands
Lettered in blood too deep to fade,
Take courage! Never in our hands
Shall the avenging sword be stayed
Till you are healed of all your pain,
And come with Honour to your own again.
_Owen Seaman_
_May 19, 1915_
THE WIFE OF FLANDERS
Low and brown barns, thatched and repatched and tattered,
Where I had seven sons until to-day,
A little hill of hay your spur has scattered....
This is not Paris. You have lost the way.
You, staring at your sword to find it brittle,
Surprised at the surprise that was your plan,
Who, shaking and breaking barriers not a little,
Find never more the death-door of Sedan--
Must I for more than carnage call you claimant,
Paying you a penny for each son you slay?
Man, the whole globe in gold were no repayment
For what _you_ have lost. And how shall I repay?
What is the price of that red spark that caught me
From a kind farm that never had a name?
What is the price of that dead man they brought me?
For other dead men do not look the same.
How should I pay for one poor graven steeple
Whereon you shattered what you shall not know?
How should I pay you, miserable people?
How should I pay you everything you owe?
Unhappy, can I give you back your honour?
Though I forgave, would any man forget?
While all the great green land has trampled on her
The treason and terror of the night we met.
Not any more in vengeance or in pardon
An old wife bargains for a bean that's hers.
You have no word to break: no heart to harden.
Ride on and prosper. You have lost your spurs.
_Gilbert Keith Chesterton_
RUSSIA--AMERICA
A wind in the world! The dark departs;
The chains now rust that crushed men's flesh and bones,
Feet tread no more the mildewed prison stones,
And slavery is lifted from your hearts.
A wind in the world! O Company
Of darkened Russia, watching long in vain,
Now shall you see the cloud of Russia's pain
Go shrinking out across a summer sky.
A wind in the world! Our God shall be
In all the future left, no kingly doll
Decked out with dreadful sceptre, steel, and stole,
But walk the earth--a man, in Charity.
* * * * *
A wind in the world! And doubts are blown
To dust along, and the old stars come forth--
Stars of a creed to Pilgrim Fathers worth
A field of broken spears and flowers strown.
A wind in the world! Now truancy
From the true self is ended; to her part
Steadfast again she moves, and from her heart
A great America cries: Death to Tyranny!
A wind in the world! And we have come
Together, sea by sea; in all the lands
Vision doth move at last, and Freedom stands
With brightened wings, and smiles and beckons home!
_John Galsworthy_
TO RUSSIA NEW AND FREE
Land of the Martyrs--of the martyred dead
And martyred living--now of noble fame!
Long wert thou saddest of the nations, wed
To Sorrow as the fire to the flame,
Not yet relentless History had writ of Teuton shame.
Thou knewest all the gloom of hope deferred.
'Twixt God and Russia wrong had built such bar
Each by the other could no more be heard.
Seen through the cloud, the child's familiar star,
That once made Heaven near, had made it seem more far.
Land of the Breaking Dawn! No more look back
To that long night that nevermore can be:
The sunless dungeon and the exile's track.
To the world's dreams of terror let it flee.
To gentle April cruel March is now antiquity.
Yet--of the Past one sacred relic save:
That boundary-post 'twixt Russia and Despair,--
Set where the dead might look upon his grave,--
Kissed by him with his last-breathed Russian air.
Keep it to witness to the world what heroes still may dare.
Land of New Hope, no more the minor key,
No more the songs of exile long and lone;
Thy tears henceforth be tears of memory.
Sing, with the joy the joyless would have known
Who for this visioned happiness so gladly gave their own.
Land of the warm heart and the friendly hand,
Strike the free chord; no more the muted strings!
Forever let the equal record stand--
A thousand winters for this Spring of Springs,
That to a warring world, through thee, millennial longing brings.
On thy white tablets, cleansed of royal stain,
What message to the future mayst thou write!--
The People's Law, the bulwark of their reign,
And vigilant Liberty, of ancient might,
And Brotherhood, that can alone lead to the loftiest height.
Take, then, our hearts' rejoicing overflow,
Thou new-born daughter of Democracy,
Whose coming sets the expectant earth aglow.
Soon the glad skies thy proud new flag shall see,
And hear thy chanted hymns of hope for Russia new and free.
_Robert Underwood Johnson_
_April, 1917_
ITALY IN ARMS
Of all my dreams by night and day,
One dream will evermore return,
The dream of Italy in May;
The sky a brimming azure urn
Where lights of amber brood and burn;
The doves about San Marco's square,
The swimming Campanile tower,
The giants, hammering out the hour,
The palaces, the bright lagoons,
The gondolas gliding here and there
Upon the tide that sways and swoons.
The domes of San Antonio,
Where Padua 'mid her mulberry-trees
Reclines; Adige's crescent flow
Beneath Verona's balconies;
Rich Florence of the Medicis;
Sienna's starlike streets that climb
From hill to hill; Assisi well
Remembering the holy spell
Of rapt St. Francis; with her crown
Of battlements, embossed by time,
Stern old Perugia looking down.
Then, mother of great empires, Rome,
City of the majestic past,
That o'er far leagues of alien foam
The shadows of her eagles cast,
Imperious still; impending, vast,
The Colosseum's curving line;
Pillar and arch and colonnade;
St. Peter's consecrated shade,
And Hadrian's tomb where Tiber strays;
The ruins on the Palatine
With all their memories of dead days.
And Naples, with her sapphire arc
Of bay, her perfect sweep of shore;
Above her, like a demon stark,
The dark fire-mountain evermore
Looming portentous, as of yore;
Fair Capri with her cliffs and caves;
Salerno drowsing 'mid her vines
And olives, and the shattered shrines
Of Paestum where the gray ghosts tread,
And where the wilding rose still waves
As when by Greek girls garlanded.
But hark! What sound the ear dismays,
Mine Italy, mine Italy?
Thou that wert wrapt in peace, the haze
Of loveliness spread over thee!
Yet since the grapple needs must be,
I who have wandered in the night
With Dante, Petrarch's Laura known,
Seen Vallombrosa's groves breeze-blown,
Met Angelo and Raffael,
Against iconoclastic might
In this grim hour must wish thee well!
_Clinton Scollard_
ON THE ITALIAN FRONT, MCMXVI
"I will die cheering, if I needs must die;
So shall my last breath write upon my lips
_Viva Italia!_ when my spirit slips
Down the great darkness from the mountain sky;
And those who shall behold me where I lie
Shall murmur: 'Look, you! how his spirit dips
From glory into glory! the eclipse
Of death is vanquished! Lo, his victor-cry!'
"Live, thou, upon my lips, Italia mine,
The sacred death-cry of my frozen clay!
Let thy dear light from my dead body shine
And to the passer-by thy message say:
'_Ecco!_ though heaven has made my skies divine,
My sons' love sanctifies my soil for aye!'"
_George Edward Woodberry_
AUSTRALIA TO ENGLAND
By all the deeds to Thy dear glory done,
By all the life blood, spilt to serve Thy need,
By all the fettered lives Thy touch hath freed,
By all Thy dream in us anew begun;
By all the guerdon English sire to son
Hath given of highest vision, kingliest deed,
By all Thine agony, of God decreed
For trial and strength, our fate with Thine is one.
Still dwells Thy spirit in our hearts and lips,
Honour and life we hold from none but Thee,
And if we live Thy pensioners no more
But seek a nation's might of men and ships,
'T is but that when the world is black with war
Thy sons may stand beside Thee strong and free.
_Archibald T. Strong_
_August, 1914_
CANADA TO ENGLAND
Great names of thy great captains gone before
Beat with our blood, who have that blood of thee:
Raleigh and Grenville, Wolfe, and all the free
Fine souls who dared to front a world in war.
Such only may outreach the envious years
Where feebler crowns and fainter stars remove,
Nurtured in one remembrance and one love
Too high for passion and too stern for tears.
O little isle our fathers held for home,
Not, not alone thy standards and thy hosts
Lead where thy sons shall follow, Mother Land:
Quick as the north wind, ardent as the foam,
Behold, behold the invulnerable ghosts
Of all past greatnesses about thee stand.
_Marjorie L.C. Pickthall_
LANGEMARCK AT YPRES
This is the ballad of Langemarck,
A story of glory and might;
Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part
In the great grim fight.
It was April fair on the Flanders Fields,
But the dreadest April then
That ever the years, in their fateful flight,
Had brought to this world of men.
North and east, a monster wall,
The mighty Hun ranks lay,
With fort on fort, and iron-ringed trench,
Menacing, grim and gray.
And south and west, like a serpent of fire,
Serried the British lines,
And in between, the dying and dead,
And the stench of blood, and the trampled mud,
On the fair, sweet Belgian vines.
And far to the eastward, harnessed and taut,
Like a scimitar, shining and keen,
Gleaming out of that ominous gloom,
Old France's hosts were seen.
When out of the grim Hun lines one night,
There rolled a sinister smoke;--
A strange, weird cloud, like a pale, green shroud,
And death lurked in its cloak.
On a fiend-like wind it curled along
Over the brave French ranks,
Like a monster tree its vapours spread,
In hideous, burning banks
Of poisonous fumes that scorched the night
With their sulphurous demon danks.
And men went mad with horror, and fled
From that terrible, strangling death,
That seemed to sear both body and soul
With its baleful, flaming breath.
Till even the little dark men of the south,
Who feared neither God nor man,
Those fierce, wild fighters of Afric's steppes,
Broke their battalions and ran:--
Ran as they never had run before,
Gasping, and fainting for breath;
For they knew 't was no human foe that slew;
And that hideous smoke meant death.
Then red in the reek of that evil cloud,
The Hun swept over the plain;
And the murderer's dirk did its monster work,
'Mid the scythe-like shrapnel rain;
Till it seemed that at last the brute Hun hordes
Had broken that wall of steel;
And that soon, through this breach in the freeman's dyke,
His trampling hosts would wheel;--
And sweep to the south in ravaging might,
And Europe's peoples again
Be trodden under the tyrant's heel,
Like herds, in the Prussian pen.
But in that line on the British right,
There massed a corps amain,
Of men who hailed from a far west land
Of mountain and forest and plain;
Men new to war and its dreadest deeds,
But noble and staunch and true;
Men of the open, East and West,
Brew of old Britain's brew.
These were the men out there that night,
When Hell loomed close ahead;
Who saw that pitiful, hideous rout,
And breathed those gases dread;
While some went under and some went mad;
But never a man there fled.
For the word was "Canada," theirs to fight,
And keep on fighting still;--
Britain said, fight, and fight they would,
Though the Devil himself in sulphurous mood
Came over that hideous hill.
Yea, stubborn, they stood, that hero band,
Where no soul hoped to live;
For five, 'gainst eighty thousand men,
Were hopeless odds to give.