I WE have been dead, our shroud enfolds the sea, Honour's a rag tossed out for winds to rend, And Virtue is most shamed, and Lust goes free, While trembling Wisdom vainly seeks a friend. Our heroes lost in trenches or the wave, Are dust or rag, but no more dead than we, Consigning to this universal grave All that is known of trust and charity. For we assigned ourselves the frightful task Of healing tender wounds with filthy hands; O, God, look not into our souls, nor ask Defence of our loose scorn of Love's demands, But help us that we consecrate to Thee The remnant of our soiled humanity. II We pray for pity, Lord, not justice, we Being but mortal, offer mortal tears, For justice would mean further cruelty, And we have had enough inhuman years. Guard our repute! We have grown gross and mean, Who hoped to tell the future something clean! We come, debauched, hoping and hoping not, Drunken with blood, burdened with all distress, Craving for pity, Lord, who have forgot The name and manner of sweet gentleness. We, being mortal, love may come again; Hold back severity -- we are but men. Ah! pity, Lord! Can all indulgence find Hope in the devious, devil-ways to Peace, Of shamefaced, shuddering remnants of mankind All murdering, none brave enough to cease? Redeem us by Thy hope lest Thy disgust Makes future empires violate our dust. III We've smashed the tablets and the songs, forsworn The passionate sweet pity that once reigned Imperial; must constant fear suborn The hearts that guilt and grossness have so stained? Could we be as we were ere battle came, We would not talk of guile or separate blame. Search not our records for the first dark ruse, Let the past go, sin is an old affair; We plead for pity, Lord, not for our dues, We, being sinners all, must share and share. Let us, all sinners, and all stained with blood, Weary with bitter consciences and lies, Assemble in a sinners' brotherhood And pour out tears from our repentant eyes, Tears for such wrongs that only tears repair. IV Ours is no cry of creed, O Lord, or race, But all the men the battles leave to live, Cry from the abject pit of their disgrace, Implore their pitying Father to forgive. So help them that they consecrate to Thee The remnant of their poor humanity. Riot, destruction, lust, all these prevailed, Reason and quiet grappled, sank, and died. Our soldiers, dreaming of home gardens, failed Seeing their final dawn in the red tide. From home's enduring husbandries beguiled, Hope rode in gladness from his ivied tower. The sun was gold upon his shining dress, But where romance and gallantry might flower The fight showed only blood and beastliness, And all the fanes of all the gods defiled. This thing we might forget and no more see If Thou wouldst slay this spectre memory. V We have been cruel in thought. Life's not so sweet With pearls and pleasures that the race should set Its ardour to destruction. Brutal feet Destroy the roses. God, let us forget That we accused of barbarous intent The foe that lies in death magnificent. How can we hate forever, having proved All men are bright and brave and somewhere loved? For every man has courage, all are peerless; Each man reigns in his region, sovereign, free; But we have broken blessed men and fearless, Each in his deep and separate agony. We have cast curses upon unknown names, And we have fallen from our vows and Thee, Gazed tearlessly on tortured human frames, And manacled the tongue of equity. Oh, we have murdered hope and babes and things Wrought by inspired fingers joyously; Earth and her vines may shroud our murderings, But what shall kill immortal memory? VI We have drawn hearty boys eager to live Into the ghastly hells of guns we made; Bewildered mothers who were glad to give Took war's enormous wastage unafraid. With resignation terrible to see They suffered questionless the deathly toll, Waiting for woe, for hope, for what might be -- Knowing that life is carrion and a soul. And is man's battle-anguish still more deep Than those sharp mother pangs that give men birth? Pain begets pain, and curses curses reap, Travail is useless, sacrifice no worth, For we have shown the world a bitter thing, Men suffering for no end but suffering. VII Can men forever hate? We who have slain The dread of death shall kill blind hate as well; Our bodies grown superior to pain, Our hearts shall learn the love the Legends tell. O, foeman, who was valorous, we crave Forgiveness for the crimes we would forgive. All men have sinned, but God made all men brave, We ask forgiveness by this sullen grave, And a little time, a little time to live. A little time to live and forget in the world The years of swords and horrors we repent, Forget the doom and savage curses hurled On foes like us, misguided, hopeful, spent. O, God, men did not know men were so brave Till foes stood silent by the choking grave. VIII You made us for the light; where now stand we? O pity, Lord, our poor humanity. Or that You might with one dissolving breath Erase from time and human memory Power's devastating panders crying 'Death!' And our poor stripped and stained mortality Hunted through new terrific wastes in vain, Through darks that dim all love and love's belief, Past iron sorcerers inventing grief, Down spiral hells like Dante's pain to pain, Or turn by other roads remote from these, The soul's desire to gentler husbandries. You made us for the light, and here we tramp The murky passages of death and gloom. We, being greatly gifted, shattered the Lamp, Debased our altitude, devised more doom. Have we been valiant? Ah, petty pride -- Teach us to live as bravely as we died. Though much is taken, much is still to lose, War has not yet consumed Thy sheltering grace; O, God, recall Thy peoples ere they bruise The old unbroken spirit of Thy race. Ere we, who held Thy torch, are doomed to climb From darks again, condemned to see afar, From timeless depths of catastrophic slime, The distant gleam of our forsaken star. IX The house of Faith and Wisdom, stone and beam, In travail and devotion have we raised; Now through the ruined terraces of dream The blind Soul wanders, homelessly and dazed; Dazedly she wonders who has done this thing, What power wrought this senseless ravaging? Souls sacrificial, consecrated years, Out of deep contemplation and calm thought Cemented with high faith and suffering's tears, Stone upon chiselled stone her temple wrought. Can we face any more those eyes of pain Now we have wrecked what shall not rise again? O, God, forget those hours of ignorance; Youth and the dreamers give their hearts in fee; Allow the broken traitors one more chance, And recompose our poor humanity. We've ruined dreams, canst Thou forgive us, then, Who have destroyed the providence of men? X The dreamers wait. What can the spirit urge Against the madness of this sorry day? How can the timid form of Peace emerge Unless the marshals let the dreamers say? And they are few and most forsaken, Lord, Who slaved and suffered for their human hope, Though Thou shalt give the martyrs to the sword, Preserve the future from the hangman's rope! Preserve for us, O God, the voice of those Who, towering o'er the tempest, speak not yet With audibility, the battle throws Their protest back against their faces, wet With tears of helplessness and huge regret. Preserve them for the moment when their word Above the ruinous carnage may be heard. XI We cannot fight forever; when the domes Of Truth's avoided temple surely gleam Above wrecked cities and forsaken homes Men will desert the battle for the dream -- For dreams are stronger than armies in the end; Old, bitter men defile the house of Truth, Decree: 'There stands your foeman, here your friend,' Declare their bloody wars that slaughter youth Till youth's fair hopes in flames of war contend. XII Ah, Youth, old as the world is not so wise! The serpent tongue poisons the heart with hate, Sets down a rule of war, a rune of lies That have no right at all -- the dreamers wait, Remembering the precept and the plan, The changeless laws that angry men forget, The just and splendid destiny of man The quarrelling peoples must acknowledge yet. Then call Thou home the bold, young boys again, Who front a ruthless and bewildering fate; Call home the young who suffer senseless pain, And leave the war to those who taught them hate. XIII The wisdom of our strength comes very slow, The current of wild wills is subtly hid. We sometimes ask: 'However could we know, We wilful, fumbling children, what we did?' We nurtured means of killing that exhaust The mode and quickness of an expert Death; And not one fell in all the holocaust But fell because of someone's little faith. Forget, O Lord, the shrapnel and the lance, The bloody plots, the brooding arrogance! XIV We have been dead, our hearts are crusted round With horn and hardness, black brutality Flowed into us a glory and sweet sound, And we have worshipped those, forgetting Thee. To have forgotten in the rage and stress Might leave our absolution undenied, But the whole import of our guiltiness Is that, forgetting, we forgot with pride. For Thou hast given wit and hands and fire, And when we saw our huge converters blast Their jewelled fumes to Heaven, our desire Yearned a proud conquest equally as vast. We saw the steel run bubbling in the mould, And, disremembering where we began, 'This steel,' we cried, 'is conquest, power untold! God is a prisoner to revolted man!' And when we watched the Dreadnoughts thrust the weight Of waves aside, and heard our cannon lift A mountain into dust, we saw our fate Gigantic without Thee -- and cut adrift. XV Thou gavest steel to us, Thou gavest brain, Thou gavest patience; we grew grossly great; And we have used Thy steel Thy will to chain, But Thou hast burst those bonds; now we await Thy judgment, who have meddled with Thy things. We thought to snare the sacred flame from Thee -- Look on our broken hands, our withered wings, And pity, Lord, our poor humanity. |