Making their quarrel thine who are grieved like thee;
And (if to thee the stars yield victory)
Tempering their hate of the great foe that hurled
Vainly her strength against the conscience of the world.
I looked again, or dreamed I looked, and saw
The stars again and all their peace again.
The moving mist had gone, and shining still
The moon went high and pale above the hill.
Not now those lights were trembling in the vast
Ways of the nervy heaven, nor trembled earth:
Profound and calm they gazed as the soft-shod hours passed.
And with less fear (not with less awe,
Remembering, England, all the blood and pain),
How look, I cried, you stern and solitary stars
On these disastrous wars!
August, 1914.
FOR France and liberty he set apart
His soul at first in aspiration high.
But pure thoughts wither and ideals die.
And self, fed richly from ambition's mart,
Swelled, triumphed with insinuating art,
The hideous, monstrous, all-engrossing I,
Which strangled love and France and liberty
And laid its eager clutch on Europe's heart.
Then Spain assailed it like an autumn gust,
And England netted it with her sea-might,
And Russia opened all her icy graves.
The huge colossus crumbled into dust
And sank forever out of human sight
On a lone island 'mid the Atlantic waves.