A Treasury of War Poetry: British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings.

       Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?

       Too many peasants fight, they know not why,

       Too many homesteads in black terror weep.

      The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.

       He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.

       He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now

       The bitterness, the folly, and the pain.

      He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn

       Shall come;—the shining hope of Europe free:

       The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth

       Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp, and Sea.

      It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,

       That all his hours of travail here for men

       Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace

       That he may sleep upon his hill again?

       Vachel Lindsay

THE "WILLIAM P. FRYE"

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      I saw her first abreast the Boston Light

       At anchor; she had just come in, turned head,

       And sent her hawsers creaking, clattering down.

       I was so near to where the hawse-pipes fed

       The cable out from her careening bow,

       I moved up on the swell, shut steam and lay

       Hove to in my old launch to look at her.

       She'd come in light, a-skimming up the Bay

       Like a white ghost with topsails bellying full;

       And all her noble lines from bow to stern

       Made music in the wind; it seemed she rode

       The morning air like those thin clouds that turn

       Into tall ships when sunrise lifts the clouds

       From calm sea-courses.

      There, in smoke-smudged coats,

       Lay funnelled liners, dirty fishing-craft,

       Blunt cargo-luggers, tugs, and ferry-boats.

       Oh, it was good in that black-scuttled lot

       To see the Frye come lording on her way Like some old queen that we had half forgot Come to her own. A little up the Bay The Fort lay green, for it was springtime then; The wind was fresh, rich with the spicy bloom Of the New England coast that tardily Escapes, late April, from an icy tomb. The State-house glittered on old Beacon Hill, Gold in the sun. … 'T was all so fair awhile; But she was fairest—this great square-rigged ship That had blown in from some far happy isle On from the shores of the Hesperides.

      They caught her in a South Atlantic road

       Becalmed, and found her hold brimmed up with wheat;

       "Wheat's contraband," they said, and blew her hull

       To pieces, murdered one of our staunch fleet,

       Fast dwindling, of the big old sailing ships

       That carry trade for us on the high sea

       And warped out of each harbor in the States.

       It wasn't law, so it seems strange to me—

       A big mistake. Her keel's struck bottom now

       And her four masts sunk fathoms, fathoms deep

       To Davy Jones. The dank seaweed will root

       On her oozed decks, and the cross-surges sweep

       Through the set sails; but never, never more

       Her crew will stand away to brace and trim,

       Nor sea-blown petrels meet her thrashing up

       To windward on the Gulf Stream's stormy rim;

       Never again she'll head a no'theast gale

       Or like a spirit loom up, sliding dumb,

       And ride in safe beyond the Boston Light,

       To make the harbor glad because she's come.

       Jeanne Robert Foster

ENGLAND AND AMERICA

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      Mother and child! Though the dividing sea

       Shall roll its tide between us, we are one,

       Knit by immortal memories, and none

       But feels the throb of ancient fealty.

       A century has passed since at thy knee

       We learnt the speech of freemen, caught the fire

       That would not brook thy menaces, when sire

       And grandsire hurled injustice back to thee.

      But the full years have wrought equality:

       The past outworn, shall not the future bring

       A deeper union, from whose life shall spring

       Mankind's best hope? In the dark night of strife

       Men perished for their dream of Liberty

       Whose lives were given for this larger life.

       Florence T. Holt

TO AMERICA

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      When the fire sinks in the grate, and night has bent

       Close wings about the room, and winter stands

       Hard-eyed before the window, when the hands

       Have turned the book's last page and friends are sleeping,

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