1914

The faces stare from old photographs; They look out to the future While I gaze into the past, At black and white pictures of women and men In sunlit streets and broad boulevards Of lost London; Paris; Berlin. Between them and me, a century lies. Between them and me, a century died. I look at them and I wonder: What was it like, in those halcyon days, Before the thunder? What were they like, unaware of what lay Just before them? The elegant ladies, the dignified men, The emperors and the kings and the queens; None of them knew what awaited them then In that summer of nineteen fourteen, When the twentieth century in earnest began, When the guns and the shells Marched through the land.