OCR Text |
Show WAR: A SONNET SEQUENCE ' H By George Sterling. H TO THE KINGS OF THIS WORLD. H H Bo yours the doom Isaiah's voice foretold, H Lifted on Babylon, O ye whose hands H Cast the sword's shadow upon weaker lands, H And for whose pride a million hearths grow cold! H Yc reap but with the cannon, and do hold H Your plowing to tho murder-god's commands; H And at your altars Desolation stands, H And in your hearts is conquest, as of old. H The legions perish and the warships drown; H Tho fish and vulture batten on the slain; H And it is ye whose word hath shaken down H The dykes that hold the chartlcss sea of pain. H Your prayers deceive not men, nor shall a crown H Hide on the brow the murder-mark of Cain. H I Now glut yourselves with conflict, nor refrain, H But let your famished provinces be fed H From bursting granaries of steel and lead! H Decree the sowing of that bitter grain H Where the great war-horse, maddened with his pain, Stamps on tho mangled living and the dead, H And from the entreated heavens overhead H Falls from a brother's hand a fiery rain. H Lift not your voices to the gentle Christ; H Your god is of the shambles! Let the moan B Of nations be your psalter, and their youth. H To Moloch and to Bel be sacrifled! H A world to which ye proffered lies alone H Learns now from Death the horror of your M I How have ye fed your people upon lies, H And cried "Peace! Peace!" and knew it would M not be! M For now the iron dragons take the sea, Hi And in the new-found fortress of the skies, Alert and fierce a deadly eagle flies. Ten thousand cannon echo your decree fl To whose profound refrain ye bend the knee M And lift unto the Lord of Love your eyes. M This is Hell's work; why raise your hands to M Him, H And those hands mailed, and holding up the H sword? M There stands another altar, stained with red, jm At whose basalt the infernal seraphim m Uplift to Satan, your conspirant lord, Jk The blood of nations, at your mandate shed. M "AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING." H i The royal word goes forth, and armies do H Tho work of devils. Agony and waste M 1 (Continued on page 10.) M WAR: A SONNET SEQUENCE (Continued from page 3.) Aro on tho world, a the grim legions haste On tho old war-roads aat the Caesars knew. Still gleams the dreadful stain of Waterloo, On Time's accusing record unerased; fr But these tho heavens where their eagles flow. Beneath the bleak and slowly Bhifting stars, Man turns him in his madness, to reveal His ancient folly and his ancient crime, And on the tragic breast austere with scars Re-girds the mail, and draws the hilted steel, Cold from the twilight battlefields of Time. |