Put up your guns, ye nations, and lay your swords away.
Forget the roar of battle ye heard but yesterday.
Forget the vanished era of autocrats and kings
And turn to face a future of better, finer things.
We strung our rows of crosses on Flanders’ flow’ry plains.
We touched the fields of Europe with our hearts’ reddest stains.
We walked the shadowed valley: we felt its deadly chill.
Some lingered on its bosom with voice forever still.
Among the wreck of empires, the dreams of yesterday.
Built on self’s foundations (the dreamers: where are they?).
We face a dawning future upon a shattered earth.
’Twill be as we shall make it--a thing of threat or worth.
O ye returning manhood, baptized in battle flame,
Ye who have fought for honor and saved the world from shame,
Ye who have stood for justice beyond the mighty seas,
Come to the task awaiting on battlefields of peace.
Put up your guns, ye nations, and lay your swords away.
’Twas yours to live beholding the world’s redemption day.
Let now the earth, forgetting its reign of strife and blood,
Welcome the dawning era--the day of brotherhood.
[Poem is on cover page with the following additional text: The Sunday
School Journal, March 1919, Volume Fifty-One, Number Three. The poem
overlays an illustration of the Statue of Liberty.]