Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE GERMAN AMERICAN TO HIS ADOPTED COUNTRY, by GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE GERMAN AMERICAN TO HIS ADOPTED COUNTRY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The great guns crashing angrily
Last Line: Still guards the teuton's holy grail!
Subject(s): German Americans; U.s. - Foreign Population; World War I; First World War


THE great guns crashing angrily
Sound, distant echoes, in our ear.
We pray for those beyond the sea
Whose lives to us are very dear.
We catch a mother's smile. We seize
In thought a father's hand again.
We see the house and through the trees
A girl's face in the window pane.
May God above them stretch His hand,
For men are mowed as fields of rye.
Destruction rides on sea and land
Or drops, like thunder, from the sky.
Columbia, though thou shed no tear,
Shall they fan hate with evil breath
Half-witted, scribbling fools who sneer
While these our brothers go to death?
Upon their page with hellish glee
They prance their joy in black and red,
While Teutons strike for liberty
And Teuton mothers count their dead.
While Death and warring Cherubim
O'er blood-red fields of battle flit,
Upon the shining mail of him
Who leads God's hosts, they puke their wit.
Shall these that are thy children fling
Their gibes upon our brothers' scars?
We taught our hearts thy songs to sing,
Aye, with our blood we waged thy wars.
We fought thy fight when Britain's paw
Upon thy country's heart was laid,
When the French eagle's iron claw
Perturbed great Montezuma's shade.
The dry bones of our kinsmen rot
In Gettysburg. Was it for this?
Are Schurz and Steuben both forgot?
Nay, thine is not a traitor's kiss.
Let not thy words belie the right,
Turn not from them that are thy kin!
Thy starry crown will shine less bright
If freemen lose, if Cossacks win.
The Red Czar's blight shall never fall
Upon the earth. nor freedom pale,
While the white blade of Parzival
Still guards the Teuton's Holy Grail!






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