Get Your Premium Membership

Justice

 October, 1918
Across a world where all men grieve
 And grieving strive the more,
The great days range like tides and leave
 Our dead on every shore.
Heavy the load we undergo,
 And our own hands prepare,
If we have parley with the foe,
 The load our sons must bear.

Before we loose the word
 That bids new worlds to birth,
Needs must we loosen first the sword
 Of Justice upon earth;
Or else all else is vain
 Since life on earth began,
And the spent world sinks back again
 Hopeless of God and Man.


A People and their King
 Through ancient sin grown strong,
Because they feared no reckoning
 Would set no bound to wrong;
But now their hour is past,
 And we who bore it find
Evil Incarnate hell at last
 To answer to mankind.


For agony and spoil
 Of nations beat to dust,
For poisoned air and tortured soil
 And cold, commanded lust,
And every secret woe
 The shuddering waters saw.
Willed and fulfilled by high and low.
 Let them relearn the Low.


That when the dooms are read,
 Not high nor low shall say:--
" My haughty or my humble head
 Was saved me in this day."
That, till the end of time,
 Their remnant shall recall
Their fathers old, confederate crime
 Availed them not at all.


That neither schools nor priests,
 Nor Kings may build again
A people with the heart of beasts
 Made wise concerning men.
Whereby our dead shall sleep
 In honour, unbetrayed,
And we in faith and honour keep
 That peace for which they paid.






Book: Reflection on the Important Things