Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, IN MEMORIAM, by PERCY MACKAYE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

IN MEMORIAM, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Her gentle spirit passed with peace
Last Line: The anguish of the poor.
Alternate Author Name(s): Mackaye, Percy Wallace
Subject(s): Death; Memory; Peace; Wilson, Ellen Louise Axson (d. 1914); Dead, The


HER gentle spirit passed with Peace —
With Peace out of a world at war
Racked by the old earth-agonies
Of kaiser, king and czar,

Where Bear and Lion crouch in lair
To rend the iron Eagle's flesh
And viewless engines of the air
Spin wide their lightning mesh,

And darkly kaiser, czar and king
With awful thunders stalk their prey. —
Yet Peace, that moves with silent wing,
Is mightier than they.

And she — our lady who has passed —
And Peace were sisters: They are gone
Together through time's holocaust
To blaze a bloodless dawn.

How otherwise the royal die
Whose power is throned on rolling drums!
Her monument of royalty
Is builded in the slums:

Her latest prayer, transformed to law,
Shall more than monarch's vow endure,
Assuaging there, with loving awe,
The anguish of the poor.





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