Login
|
Join PoetrySoup
Home
Submit Poems
Login
Sign Up
Member Home
My Poems
My Quotes
My Profile & Settings
My Inboxes
My Outboxes
Soup Mail
Contest Results/Status
Contests
Poems
Poets
Famous Poems
Famous Poets
Dictionary
Types of Poems
Quotes
Short Stories
Articles
Forum
Blogs
Poem of the Day
New Poems
Resources
Syllable Counter
Anthology
Grammar Check
Greeting Card Maker
Classifieds
Member Area
Member Home
My Profile and Settings
My Poems
My Quotes
My Short Stories
My Articles
My Comments Inboxes
My Comments Outboxes
Soup Mail
Poetry Contests
Contest Results/Status
Followers
Poems of Poets I Follow
Friend Builder
Soup Social
Poetry Forum
New/Upcoming Features
The Wall
Soup Facebook Page
Who is Online
Link to Us
Member Poems
Poems - Top 100 New
Poems - Top 100 All-Time
Poems - Best
Poems - by Topic
Poems - New (All)
Poems - New (PM)
Poems - New by Poet
Poems - Random
Poems - Read
Poems - Unread
Member Poets
Poets - Best New
Poets - New
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems Recent
Poets - Top 100 Community
Poets - Top 100 Contest
Famous Poems
Famous Poems - African American
Famous Poems - Best
Famous Poems - Classical
Famous Poems - English
Famous Poems - Haiku
Famous Poems - Love
Famous Poems - Short
Famous Poems - Top 100
Famous Poets
Famous Poets - Living
Famous Poets - Most Popular
Famous Poets - Top 100
Famous Poets - Best
Famous Poets - Women
Famous Poets - African American
Famous Poets - Beat
Famous Poets - Cinquain
Famous Poets - Classical
Famous Poets - English
Famous Poets - Haiku
Famous Poets - Hindi
Famous Poets - Jewish
Famous Poets - Love
Famous Poets - Metaphysical
Famous Poets - Modern
Famous Poets - Punjabi
Famous Poets - Romantic
Famous Poets - Spanish
Famous Poets - Suicidal
Famous Poets - Urdu
Famous Poets - War
Poetry Resources
Anagrams
Bible
Book Store
Character Counter
Cliché Finder
Poetry Clichés
Common Words
Copyright Information
Grammar
Grammar Checker
Homonym
Homophones
How to Write a Poem
Lyrics
Love Poem Generator
New Poetic Forms
Plagiarism Checker
Poetics
Poetry Art
Publishing
Random Word Generator
Spell Checker
Store
What is Good Poetry?
Word Counter
Email Poem
Your IP Address: 3.133.87.156
From Email:
Required
Email Address Not Valid.
To Email:
Email Address Not Valid.
Required
Subject
Required
Personal Note:
Poem Title:
Poem
MAKE war songs out of these; Make chants that repeat and weave. Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns; Make slow-booming psalms up to the boom of the big guns. Make a marching song of swinging arms and swinging legs, Going along, Going along, On the roads from San Antonio to Athens, from Seattle to Bagdad— The boys and men in winding lines of khaki, the circling squares of bayonet points. Cowpunchers, cornhuskers, shopmen, ready in khaki; Ballplayers, lumberjacks, ironworkers, ready in khaki; A million, ten million, singing, “I am ready.” This the sun looks on between two seaboards, In the land of Lincoln, in the land of Grant and Lee. I heard one say, “I am ready to be killed.” I heard another say, “I am ready to be killed.” O sunburned clear-eyed boys! I stand on sidewalks and you go by with drums and guns and bugles, You—and the flag! And my heart tightens, a fist of something feels my throat When you go by, You on the kaiser hunt, you and your faces saying, “I am ready to be killed.” They are hunting death, Death for the one-armed mastoid kaiser. They are after a Hohenzollern head: There is no man-hunt of men remembered like this. The four big brothers are out to kill. France, Russia, Britain, America— The four republics are sworn brothers to kill the kaiser. Yes, this is the great man-hunt; And the sun has never seen till now Such a line of toothed and tusked man-killers, In the blue of the upper sky, In the green of the undersea, In the red of winter dawns. Eating to kill, Sleeping to kill, Asked by their mothers to kill, Wished by four-fifths of the world to kill— To cut the kaiser’s throat, To hack the kaiser’s head, To hang the kaiser on a high-horizon gibbet. And is it nothing else than this? Three times ten million men thirsting the blood Of a half-cracked one-armed child of the German kings? Three times ten million men asking the blood Of a child born with his head wrong-shaped, The blood of rotted kings in his veins? If this were all, O God, I would go to the far timbers And look on the gray wolves Tearing the throats of moose: I would ask a wilder drunk of blood. Look! It is four brothers in joined hands together. The people of bleeding France, The people of bleeding Russia, The people of Britain, the people of America— These are the four brothers, these are the four republics. At first I said it in anger as one who clenches his fist in wrath to fling his knuckles into the face of some one taunting; Now I say it calmly as one who has thought it over and over again at night, among the mountains, by the seacombers in storm. I say now, by God, only fighters to-day will save the world, nothing but fighters will keep alive the names of those who left red prints of bleeding feet at Valley Forge in Christmas snow. On the cross of Jesus, the sword of Napoleon, the skull of Shakespeare, the pen of Tom Jefferson, the ashes of Abraham Lincoln, or any sign of the red and running life poured out by the mothers of the world, By the God of morning glories climbing blue the doors of quiet homes, by the God of tall hollyhocks laughing glad to children in peaceful valleys, by the God of new mothers wishing peace to sit at windows nursing babies, I swear only reckless men, ready to throw away their lives by hunger, deprivation, desperate clinging to a single purpose imperturbable and undaunted, men with the primitive guts of rebellion, Only fighters gaunt with the red brand of labor’s sorrow on their brows and labor’s terrible pride in their blood, men with souls asking danger—only these will save and keep the four big brothers. Good-night is the word, good-night to the kings, to the czars, Good-night to the kaiser. The breakdown and the fade-away begins. The shadow of a great broom, ready to sweep out the trash, is here. One finger is raised that counts the czar, The ghost who beckoned men who come no more— The czar gone to the winds on God’s great dustpan, The czar a pinch of nothing, The last of the gibbering Romanoffs. Out and good-night— The ghosts of the summer palaces And the ghosts of the winter palaces! Out and out, good-night to the kings, the czars, the kaisers. Another finger will speak, And the kaiser, the ghost who gestures a hundred million sleeping-waking ghosts, The kaiser will go onto God’s great dustpan— The last of the gibbering Hohenzollerns. Look! God pities this trash, God waits with a broom and a dustpan, God knows a finger will speak and count them out. It is written in the stars; It is spoken on the walls; It clicks in the fire-white zigzag of the Atlantic wireless; It mutters in the bastions of thousand-mile continents; It sings in a whistle on the midnight winds from Walla Walla to Mesopotamia: Out and good-night. The millions slow in khaki, The millions learning Turkey in the Straw and John Brown’s Body, The millions remembering windrows of dead at Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and Spottsylvania Court House, The millions dreaming of the morning star of Appomattox, The millions easy and calm with guns and steel, planes and prows: There is a hammering, drumming hell to come. The killing gangs are on the way. God takes one year for a job. God takes ten years or a million. God knows when a doom is written. God knows this job will be done and the words spoken: Out and good-night. The red tubes will run, And the great price be paid, And the homes empty, And the wives wishing, And the mothers wishing. There is only one way now, only the way of the red tubes and the great price. Well… Maybe the morning sun is a five-cent yellow balloon, And the evening stars the joke of a God gone crazy. Maybe the mothers of the world, And the life that pours from their torsal folds— Maybe it’s all a lie sworn by liars, And a God with a cackling laughter says: “I, the Almighty God, I have made all this, I have made it for kaisers, czars, and kings.” Three times ten million men say: No. Three times ten million men say: God is a God of the People. And the God who made the world And fixed the morning sun, And flung the evening stars, And shaped the baby hands of life, This is the God of the Four Brothers; This is the God of bleeding France and bleeding Russia; This is the God of the people of Britain and America. The graves from the Irish Sea to the Caucasus peaks are ten times a million. The stubs and stumps of arms and legs, the eyesockets empty, the cripples, ten times a million. The crimson thumb-print of this anathema is on the door panels of a hundred million homes. Cows gone, mothers on sick-beds, children cry a hunger and no milk comes in the noon-time or at night. The death-yells of it all, the torn throats of men in ditches calling for water, the shadows and the hacking lungs in dugouts, the steel paws that clutch and squeeze a scarlet drain day by day—the storm of it is hell. But look! child! the storm is blowing for a clean air. Look! the four brothers march And hurl their big shoulders And swear the job shall be done. Out of the wild finger-writing north and south, east and west, over the blood-crossed, blood-dusty ball of earth, Out of it all a God who knows is sweeping clean, Out of it all a God who sees and pierces through, is breaking and cleaning out an old thousand years, is making ready for a new thousand years. The four brothers shall be five and more. Under the chimneys of the winter time the children of the world shall sing new songs. Among the rocking restless cradles the mothers of the world shall sing new sleepy-time songs.
Type the characters you see in the picture
Required