THE feeble folk wane through the ages, and careless the Mighty ones smite them; Who is there that shall avenge the shedding of innocent blood? Over the earth and the sea, the spoiler and slayer triumph, Till the low sobs grow to a shriek, and the tears to a flood. Careless are they, the strong, secure of the fathomless Future; As it has been shall it be even to the pitiless end. In their dens, by the hills, or the sea, long ages the bickering cave-men, Armed with their sharpened flints, rob and ravish and slay; The smoke of the Aztec victims steams up from the Mexican altars, And the quivering heart is torn by the priests from the living breast; The bearded Assyrian treads on the necks of the vanquished foemen; The shafts from the chariot pierce the huddled wretches who fly. On the tombs of the Nile's grave lords still marches the doleful procession -- The captives go forth to swift death or the lifelong doom of the slave. Laurel-crowned, up the Capitol's steep the heavy-eyed Caesar advances; Splendid the triumph rolls by, with the fettered captives behind; The half-famished lions leap forth on the sands of the bloody arena, And for ages no pitying thrill touches those merciless hearts. Through all time under African skies, the tyrant or slaver oppresses; The red man slays and is slain on the limitless plains of the West; Through the weary suffering Past, far and wide, by land and o'er ocean, The feeble are trampled down, and only the mighty are blest. Comes there no end of these things? shall men murder and ravage for ever? Shall not a mightier hand give to the desolate Peace? And thou, my Britain, unconquered, untrod by the foot of the foeman, Hast thou deep Peace indeed in thy borders, or imminent strife? Thou who slayest the savage with bolts from thy murderous death-dealing engines, And lettest thy children starve in the midst of plenty around, Though to-day thou seemest at rest, shalt thou scorn the lesson of ages, Singing thoughtless paeans of Peace in a time wherein no Peace is? When the graves of the slain lie thick, Lorraine, on thy vine-covered hillsides, And the New World echoes and throbs with the stress of a fratricide strife; When the cry of the tortured for Christ rises up from ravaged Armenia, And the murdered myriads appeal from the fiendish Moslem in vain; Maidens outraged, and teeming mothers cut open, the innocent children Dashed to death on the stones of the street, or spared for a crueller lust, While strong Europe, too selfish to aid, is wrecked by her useless battalions, And the people, affrighted, shrink back from the thought of the terrors to be; When fiends plot together in secret, driven mad by unreasoning hatred, Flinging death and destruction unmoved, though 'tis only the innocent bleed, And groans of the strong men rise, who fain would labour, but may not, While their pale-faced children starve or rot in their feverish dens; -- What heart has a man to tell of an infinite ruth and pity, Whose ears are filled with the noise of the woes and the sorrows around? Shall the common lot take thee too, O dear land, the doom of the feeble, When the strength that was thine is spent, and the foemen beleaguer thee sore? Nay; destroy not the reckless savage, who flings his rude manhood against thee, Whom thy pitiless engines mow down as a mower the grass of the field. But keep thou thy Power unassailed, and be just and fear not the future; With equal and merciful laws make thou thy wide Empire, rejoice! Be to thy children a Mother, be they as brother to brother, Acting the precept divine which was taught by thy Teacher and Lord; Let thy strong sons raise up thy weak, through a Christ-like strength of compassion, Bearing each other's burdens, and lightening each other's woes; Let not the State any more turn with merciless aspect averted From the sight of the people's pain, unheeding their pitiful cry. Scorn thou the pedants who prate of dead laws stern and unbending, Based only on selfish instincts, and spurning the General Good, Knowing one limit alone to the Commonwealth's province of mercy -- That no action of all shall mar the life-giving effort of each. Let thy Empire of self-governed men prove how weak is the arm of the despot, How mighty the sum of the strength of myriads obeying the law. Save thou the weak from themselves when strong temptations assail them, The curses of Greed and of Sloth, the Demons of Lust and of Drink. By patient toil without price, raise thou in the hearts of the lowly The white bloom of knowledge, to swell to wisdom's ineffable fruit. Destroy not the humble home, when the strength of the worker has vanished, And the young have gone from the nest, and the cottage is silent and still. Let the State, with wise providence, aid the faithful servants of labour To an honest wage for their toil, and relief from the sorrows of age. Raise the myriads of poor and cast-down from the sloughs where to-day they languish, Teach them the civic sense, their duty to man and to God. Join thou and thy children your strength, till the nations learn the unreason, The folly, the mischief, the crime of the murderous evils of war; Let a stronger league of Peace dispel the jealous suspicions, The angers, the senseless hates, which divide and distract men to-day, Till the Voice of Justice is heard, August, Inviolate, Awful, Where now are the myriad cries of causeless passion and hate; Then let the Judge ascend to His Throne, and the weak and the strong be judged. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: WIDOW MCFARLANE by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SOPHISTICATION by CONRAD AIKEN THE MOUNTAIN WHIPPOORWILL (A GEORGIA ROMANCE) by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET CONTRA MORTEM: THE GREAT DEATH by HAYDEN CARRUTH |