Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ARMENIA, A.D. 1894-5, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ARMENIA, A.D. 1894-5, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Dead by their ravaged fields
Last Line: And make the desert blossom as the rose!
Subject(s): Armenia; Genocide


DEAD by their ravaged fields
And blackened roof-trees chill,
After long woes at rest,
Our martyred brothers lie.
Through the dark forests, deep,
Naked and famished, creep
The sad survivors of a race oppressed;
White on the blue autumnal sky,
Ararat's sacred hill
O'er the forlorn and ruined plain
Uncaring seems to smile --
Uncaring for the blood, the wrong, the guile,
The hopeless griefs, the oft-repeated pain,
The innocent lives defiled, the supplications vain.

The spoiler robs and preys,
With rape and torture for his daily work.
Unchecked the wolfish Kurd torments and slays.
The obscene, ineffable Turk,
False heart and glozing tongue,
Fills all the hapless land with lust and blood.
Into the murder-pits are flung
Dying and dead together, old and young,
The sire, the mother with her unborn child,
The virgin lives defiled.
Or if escape there be 'tis through the shame
Of souls too weak to avow the Holy Name,
Or theirs who from the dreadful precipice,
Veiling their desperate eyes,
Plunge with their children through the void to gain,
Dying, release from pain.

What? Has God's thought forgot
His people's woes? Doth His averted ear
No more their cries of hopeless anguish hear --
The wail for precious lives, which now are not?
Shall not the all-seeing Eye
Look downward from the dumb unheeding sky
And with a glance confound the might of Ill?
Shall the oppressor still
Through endless aeons wreak his fiendish will --
Ravish and rob and murder in the name
Of that dark Antichrist whose rule of shame
Blights the dead East; for whom the spear, the sword,
And ruthless horrors of unsparing war
Are weapons fitter far
Than are the futile forgeries of his Word,
Who, knowing not compassion, yet makes sure
With prayer from lips impure
Of Paradise -- no place of Innocence,
Or white-winged soaring Hope immense,
But a foul Lazar-house of Lust and Sense?

And this, our Europe strong,
Which at a common altar boasts to kneel,
Shall no compassionate yearning come to move,
No stirrings of fraternal love,
For these our brothers who have pined so long?
Shall She no pity feel
For these, the martyrs of our Faith who sigh,
Treading the cold and sunless ways of death
Long ere they gain to die;
Strong Russia, Champion of the Christian East;
France, through whose soul, too generous to forget,
The ardour of St. Louis pulses yet;
Our noble England, with the years increased,
A mightier Venice with "the East in fee,"
And her great eldest daughter, She
Who sits august and free
A crownless Commonwealth from sea to sea.
Shall these, unmoved by the long Past of pain,
Wait till the tide of blood returns again
And watch once more their helpless brethren die,
These who upheld or spared the waning secular lie?
Nay, nay, it is enough! enough! No more
Shall black Oppression rule. Her reign is o'er.
No more, O Earth! no more!

No more! Forbid it, Heaven!
Arise, O puissant Christendom, be strong!
God's voice within you calls -- the voice of Fate!
Confound this monstrous tyranny of wrong.
Let Love prevail, not Hate!
With you the Future lies. 'Twere shame indeed
If mutual jealousies, if coward fears,
Adding fresh force to swell the sum of ill,
Prolonged the accursed reign of pain and tears,
And bade again a hapless nation bleed.
Succour the weak! Drive back their pitiless foes!
Let not despair afflict your brethren still!
Let the new-coming Age, a happier birth,
Bless these waste-places of the suffering Earth!
Let Peace, with Law, the tranquil valleys fill,
And make the desert blossom as the Rose!





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