Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/98

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GREAT BRITAIN AND AMERICA

What seek we now, and hazard all on the aim?
In the heart of man is the undiscovered earth
Whose hope's our compass; sweet with glorious passion
Of men's goodwill; a world to forge and fashion
Worthy the things we have seen and brought to birth.


Taps of the Drum! Now once again they beat:
And the answer comes; a continent arms. Dread,
Pity, and Grief, there is no escape. The call
Is the call of the risen Dead.
Terrible year of the nations' trampling feet!
An angel has blown his trumpet over all
From the ends of the earth, from East to uttermost West,
Because of the soul of man, that shall not fail,
That will not make refusal, or turn, or quail,
No, nor for all calamity, stay its quest.
And here, here too, is the New World, born of pain
In destiny-spelling hours. The old world breaks
Its mould, and life runs fierce and fluid, a stream
That floods, dissolves, re-makes.
Each pregnant moment, charged to its extreme,
Quickens unending future, and all's vain
But the onward mind, that dares the oncoming years
And takes their storm, a master. Life shall then
Transfigure Time with yet more marvellous men.
Hail to the sunrise! Hail to the Pioneers!


JIMMY DOANE

OFTEN I think of you, Jimmy Doane,—
You who, light-heartedly, came to my house
Three autumns, to shoot and to eat a grouse!


As I sat apart in this quiet room,
My mind was full of the horror of war
And not with the hope of a visitor.


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