Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HEADSMEN TO THE LIGHT by FRANK WILMOT

First Line: SOFT HEARTS AND WAVING HANDS
Last Line: AND YOUR STAINED HANDS ARE CLEANSED AND YOU FORGIVEN.
SOFT hearts and waving hands
Bury the fact and smother war's grim commands
As you that are about to die, salute,
Salute and singing pass; the blaze and roar
And tramp and banners make that hour mute
When you that hear the bugle hear no more.

I scan your swarthy faces and I rue
The thing you go to do.
Yet I, who see to the end, can only say,
'Let pity die, let love die, go and slay!'

There's Sylvia Pinkcheeks and your blue-eyed boy,
Forget their cries, let pity in all things go;
Men may die swiftly in a gulp of joy,
And when a man is dead he does not know.
So march where battles call,
Truth lives though thousands fall!
Crusaders to the light that burns and blinds
The soul to things of comfort till it finds
Peace in the solemn nave
Of victory or the grave.

In days like these all gods forget the meek;
So let your slaying be like splendid things --
The things men do for joy; laugh when you speak
Of the strange fitful deaths that battle brings;
For Honour reckons not the lives it gives
So long as Honour lives.

To die, to die, what matter
Is all this maudlin chatter?
The dead man does not know
Of blood across his brow,
Nor the horror of maimed limbs that laid him low --
He's dead, and there's an end,
What's left concerns his friend.
He's gone the way he went prepared to go.
So pity of friends and pity of home must pass
Without one breathed 'Alas!'
And all our cherished dreams arrive at this --
How beautiful it is!
I speak from a godlike mood;
I bless your blades to blood!
Be ruthless, splendid, bloody, and delight
In your inspired might.
Let the world die with fright,
Let your applauders learn
That flames of war will burn
Till this world's horrid darkness breaks in light.

I bless your swords to blood and ruddy flesh.
Rush roaring to the fray,
Pity lies cold, the world is in the mesh.
Go on! Go on! and slay
Till peaceful years blossom from plains shell-riven
And your stained hands are cleansed and you forgiven.
Let the world run mad
Applauding you its servants and be glad.
Not soldiers you to fight with savage pride.
No! the heartbeats of truth measure your stride.
To do kind deeds you go in towering might,
Not slaughterers, but Headsmen to the Light;
Headsmen who know 'twere easier to die
Than slay the thing you slay, and yet who hear
Voices of faith, splendour, and liberty,
Impulses of all honour calling clear.
With the souls of unborn millions to guard, --
Strike now with large assurance and strike hard.
Men dread the things they say,
Tremble for things they do
On the grim and difficult way
That leads them to the true.
But the thing is more than the man,
And tender indecision mars the plan.

Death in the dawn, blood in the evening star!
Deep in the cloistered soul stir sounds of war
For that the gibbet and the iron yoke
Threaten all poet dreams that ever woke,
All song that ever spoke.
So every man of worth
Drowns pity and goes forth
To fight for all the wonder of the earth,
Till agonised battalions forward hurled
Drive agony out of the world.
Always the saint must slay
With murder in his eyes,
Always the saint must slay
To hold his saintlier way!
Crusaders to the bright, unshackled ray
Of freedom, go you onward, march and slay
There is no other way!
War beckons, after all,
What's terrible in the call?
What's war against the storm and stress
Of silent saintliness?

Let pity die a day, a month, a year,
Or all things die forever, tear your dreams
From home and mother and the little fear
For food, and turn you where wild slaughter screams.
Let pity die, and break and slaughter and burn,
So this devouring beast shall not return.
O! splendid brothers! massed and unafraid,
Single and dauntless, merry to the dark,
Rest not till gun and blade
Have left the foemen stark.
Oh, I have come to love the brute in you,
The sickening glitter of your bayonets,
The murderous clang and roar, the pallid blue
Of a foeman's face who grasps the blade he gets.

And I say this,
Tremble and say, knowing how true it is!
And I say this, I who love beauty well,
Kindness and babies and the sweets of morn,
For that I know to crush this horde from hell
Is to preserve the light for years unborn.
Now make your history, my brothers, reared
In the sweet arms of a young and gentle fate;
Go out with fire and make your country feared,
Go out with swords and carve your country great.
And should your hearts grow sore
With blood and staring eyes,
Of scream and writhe and roar,
Remember 'mid these cries
That freedom lives no more
Unless that foeman dies.
And if compassion breathes of pity white,
And your soul stoops to let sweet kindness in,
Remember this: That life through death must win.
Remember fate and right,
Remember God, and smite
Till peaceful years blossom from plains shell-riven
And your stained hands are cleansed and you forgiven.



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