Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TRUCE AND THE PEACE (NOVEMBER, 1918), by ROBINSON JEFFERS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TRUCE AND THE PEACE (NOVEMBER, 1918), by             Poem Explanation     Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Peace now for every fury has her day
Last Line: We never knew till then that he was there
Subject(s): Peace; World War I


??The trees are lopped to the root-hold
And the trench-line ragged,
Dead men's bones like last year's leaves in the road-ditch.
To-night there is only sound of the clock
In the bleak, cold, November darkness.
Even under the moon there is no beauty
In such landscape: bleak enough, desolate enough
Surely, in our little gay valley of Carmel,
Only this thin, bright, delicate evening-star
Of autumn over the bay and one
More year gone.
And in Europe this morning the sound of the horn
Sounded, they say, to end the struggle of nations,
The red-brained thing; and the thin, bright star
Pales, and there is a quiver of gray along the horizon,
And the east is cold.
For to-day, in the Armistice,
There came a strange, portentous calm:
The guns, for the first time in four years,
Were still. They stopped them at eleven.
And then the enemy emerged from his hiding-places,
He and we meeting in the midst of the field,
And talking of little things,
Asking names, and smiling faintly,
Trying to forget the past.
But the little things have their edge,
And the men who have seen red in the setting sun
Remember all. The new light,
Though it be the morning of peace,
Is still the light of the morning after the battle.
To-night there is only sound of the clock
In the bleak, cold, November darkness.
The east wind is keener than the north
And wilder, full of tragic portents.
Surely, in our little gay valley of Carmel,
Only this thin, bright, delicate evening-star
Of autumn over the bay, and one
More year gone.
But the end is not yet,
For the striving of man to be master
And the hate of the heart will never be ended.
The guns are still, but the smoke is
Only beginning to clear. We have won
Peace for a day, but the great Peace
Still remains to be won:
That man may know his own best interest
And may act it. This is the new heroism.






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