ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

Published 1913

Reprinted 1915, 1918, 1919

Our hearts were not set on fighting,
   We did not pant for the fray,
And whatever wrongs need righting,
   We would not have met that way.
But the way that has opened before us
   Leads on thro’ a blood-red field;
And we swear by the great God o’er us,
   We will die, but we will not yield.

The battle is not of our making,
   And war was never our plan;
Yet, all that is sweet forsaking,
   We march to it, man by man.
It is either to smite, or be smitten,
   There’s no other choice to-day;
And we live, as befits the Briton,
   Or we die, as the Briton may.

Ruined? destroyed?  Ah, no; though blood in rivers ran
Down all her ancient streets; though treasures manifold
Love-wrought, Time-mellowed, and beyond the price of gold
Are lost, yet Belgium’s star shines still in God’s vast plan.

Rarely have Kings been great, since kingdoms first began;
Rarely have great kings been great men, when all was told.
But, by the lighted torch in mailèd hands, behold,
Immortal Belgium’s immortal king, and Man.

At the concert and the play
Everywhere you see them sitting,
Knitting, knitting.
Women who the other day
Thought of nothing but their frocks
Or their jewels or their locks,
Women who have lived for pleasure,
Who have known no work but leisure,
Now are knitting, knitting, knitting
For the soldiers over there.

On the trains and on the ships
With a diligence befitting,
They are knitting.
Some with smiles upon their lips,
Some with manners debonair,
Some with earnest look and air.
But each heart in its own fashion,
Weaves in pity and compassion
In their knitting, knitting, knitting
For the soldiers over there.

Oh the Kings of earth have mobilised their men.
See them moving, valour proving,
To the fields of glory going,
Banners flowing, bugles blowing,
Every one a mother’s son,
Brave with uniform and gun,
Keeping step with easy swing,
Yes, with easy step and light marching onward to the fight,
Just to please the warlike fancy of a King;
Who has mobilised his army for the strife.

That pale word ‘Neutral’ sits becomingly
On lips of weaklings.  But the men whose brains
Find fuel in their blood, the men whose minds
Hold sympathetic converse with their hearts,
Such men are never neutral.  That word stands
Unsexed and impotent in Realms of Speech.
When mighty problems face a startled world
No virile man is neutral.  Right or wrong
His thoughts go forth, assertive, unafraid
To stand by his convictions, and to do
Their part in shaping issues to an end.
Silence may guard the door of useless words,
At dictate of Discretion; but to stand
Without opinions in a world which needs
Constructive thinking, is a coward’s part.

A book has been made for the King,
A book of beauty and art;
To the good king’s eyes
A smile shall rise
Hiding the ache in his heart—
Hiding the hurt and the grief
As he turns it, leaf by leaf.

A book has been made for the King,
A book of blood and of blight;
To the Great King’s eyes
A look shall rise
That will blast and wither and smite—
Yes, smite with a just God’s rage,
As He turns it, page by page.

Said the Kaiser’s god to the god of the Czar:
   ‘Hark, hark, how my people pray.
Their faith, methinks, is greater by far
Than all the faiths of the others are;
   They know I will help them slay.’

Said the god of the Czar: ‘My people call
   In a medley of tongues; they know
I will lend my strength to them one and all.
Wherever they fight their foes shall fall
   Like grass where the mowers go.’

Then the god of the Gauls spoke out of a cloud
   To the god of the King nearby:
‘Our people pray, tho’ they pray not loud;
They ask for courage to slaughter a crowd,
   And to laugh, tho’ themselves may die.’

There was no wind, and yet the air
   Seemed suddenly astir;
There were no forms, and yet all space
   Seemed thronged with growing hosts.
They came from Where, and from Nowhere,
   Like phantoms as they were;
They came from many a land and place—
   The ghosts, the ghosts, the ghosts.

And some were white, and some were grey,
   And some were red as blood—
Those ghosts of men who met their death
   Upon the field of war.
Against the skies of fading day,
   Like banks of cloud they stood;
And each wraith asked another wraith,
   ‘What were we fighting for?’

In voices like the winds that moan
   Among pine trees at night,
They whispered long, the newly dead,
   While listening stars came out.
‘We wonder if the cause is known,
   And if the war was right,
That killed us in our prime,’ they said,
   ‘And what it was about.’

They came in throngs that filled all space—
   Those whispering phantom hosts;
They came from many a land and place,
   The ghosts, the ghosts, the ghosts.

Why should the poet of these pregnant times
Be asked to sing of war’s unholy crimes?

To laud and eulogise the trade which thrives
On horrid holocausts of human lives?

Man was a fighting beast when earth was young,
And war the only theme when Homer sung.

’Twixt might and might the equal contest lay:
Not so the battles of our modern day.

Too often now the conquering hero struts,
A Gulliver among the Lilliputs.

Success no longer rests on skill or fate,
But on the movements of a syndicate.

Of old, men fought and deemed it right and just,
To-day the warrior fights because he must;

Oh, there are worthier themes for poet’s pen
In this great hour than bloody deeds of men:

The rights of many—not the worth of one—
The coming issues, not the battle done;

The awful opulence and awful need—
The rise of brotherhood—the fall of greed;

The soul of man replete with God’s own force,
The call ‘to heights,’ and not the cry ‘to horse.’

Are there not better themes in this great age
For pen of poet, or for voice of sage,

Than those old tales of killing?  Song is dumb
Only that greater song in time may come.

When comes the bard, he whom the world waits for,
He will not sing of War.

Little lads and grandsires,
Women old with care;
But all the men are dying men
Or dead men over there.

No one stops to dig graves;
Who has time to spare?
The dead men, the dead men
How the dead men stare.

Kings are out a-hunting—
Oh, the sport is rare;
With dying men and dead men
Falling everywhere.

Life for lads and grandsires;
Spoils for kings to share;
And dead men, dead men,
Dead men everywhere.

Over the din of battle,
Over the cannons’ rattle,
Over the strident voices of men and their dying groans,
I hear the falling of thrones.

Out of the wild disorder
That spreads from border to border,
I see a new world rising from ashes of ancient towns;
And the Rulers wear no crowns.

Over the blood-charged water,
Over the fields of slaughter,
Down to the hidden vaults of Time, where lie the worn-out things
I see the passing of Kings.

Angel of Peace, the hounds of war,
Unleashed, are all abroad,
And war’s foul trade again is made
   Man’s leading aim in life.
Blood dyes the billow and the sod;
   The very winds are rife
With tales of slaughter.  Angel, pray,
What can we do or think or say
In times like these?
      ‘Child, think of God!’

‘Before this little speck in space
Called Earth with light was shod,
Great chains and tiers of splendid spheres
   Were fashioned by His hand.
Be thine the part to love and laud,
   Nor seek to understand.
Go lift thine eyes from death-charged guns
To one who made a billion suns;
And trust and wait.
      Child, dwell on God!’

One ship drives east and another drives west,
With the self-same winds that blow,
   ’Tis the set of the sails
   And not the gales
That tell them the way to go.
Like the winds of the sea are the winds of fate,
As we voyage along through life,
   ’Tis the set of the soul
   That decides its goal
And not the calm or the strife.

The search for beauty is the search for God
Who is All Beauty.  He who seeks shall find.
And all along the paths my feet have trod,
I have sought hungrily with heart and mind,
   And open eyes for beauty, everywhere.
   Lo! I have found the world is very fair.
The search for beauty is the search for God.

Beauty was first revealed to me by stars,
   Before I saw it in my mother’s eyes,
Or, seeing, sensed it beauty, I was stirred
To awe and wonder by those orbs of light
   All palpitant against empurpled skies.
They spoke a language to my childish heart
Of mystery and splendour, and of space,
Friendly with gracious, unseen presences.
Beauty was first revealed to me by stars.

Clover in blossom, red and honey-sweet,
   In summer billowed like a crimson sea
Across the meadow lands.  One day, I stood
Breast-high amidst its waves, and heard the hum
   Of myriad bees, that had gone mad like me
With fragrance and with beauty.  Over us,
A loving sun smiled from a cloudless sky,
While a bold breeze kissed lightly as it passed,
Clover in blossom, red and honey-sweet.

Winter, though rude, is delicate in art—
   More delicate than Summer or than fall
(Even as rugged man is more refined
In vital things than woman).  Winter’s touch
   On Nature seemed most beautiful of all—
That evanescent beauty of the frost
On window panes; of clean, fresh, fallen snow;
Of white, white sunlight on the ice-draped trees.
Winter, though rude, is delicate in art.

Morning!  The word itself is beautiful,
   And the young hours have many gifts to give
That feed the soul with beauty.  He who keeps
His days for labour and his nights for sleep
   Wakes conscious of the joy it is to live,
And brings from that mysterious Land of Dreams
A sense of beauty that illumines earth.
Morning!  The word itself is beautiful.

The search for beauty is the search for God.

There are, there are
Invisible Great Helpers of the race.
Across unatlased continents of space,
From star to star.
   In answer to some soul’s imperious need,
   They speed, they speed.

When the earth-loving young are forced to stand
Upon the border of the Unknown Land,
They come, they come—those angels who have trod
The altitudes of God,
And to the trembling heart
Their strength impart.
   Have you not seen the delicate young maid,
Filled with the joy of life in her fair dawn,
   Look in the face of death, all unafraid,
And smilingly pass on?

This is no vision of a dreamer’s mind.
Though we are blind
They live, they live,
Filling all space—
Invisible Great Helpers of the race.

A toast to the splendid daughters
Of the New World over the waters,
   A world that is great as new;
Daughters of brave old races,
Daughters of heights and spaces,
Broad seas and broad earth places—
   Hail to your land and you!

The sun and the winds have fed you;
The width of your world has led you
   Out into the larger view;
Strong with a strength that is tender,
Bright with a primal splendour,
Homage and praise we render—
   Hail to your land and you!

You have lived long and learned the secret of life, O Seer!
Tell me what are the best three things to seek—
The best three things for a man to seek on earth?

The best three things for a man to seek, O Son! are these:
Reverence for that great Source from whence he came;
Work for the world wherein he finds himself;
And knowledge of the Realm toward which he goes.

What are the best three things to love on earth, O Seer!
What are the best three things for a man to love?

What are the three great sins to shun, O Seer!—
What are the three great sins for a man to shun?

The three great sins for a man to shun, O Son! are these:
A thought which soils the heart from whence it goes;
An action that can harm a living thing;
And undeveloped energies of mind.

What are the worst three things to fear, O Seer!—
What are the worst three things for a man to fear?

The worst three things for man to fear, O Son! are these:
Doubt and suspicion in a young child’s eyes;
Accusing shame upon a woman’s face;
And in himself no consciousness of God.

New paradise, and groom and bride;
The world was all their own;
Her heart swelled full of love and pride;
Yet were they quite alone?
‘Now how is it, oh how is it, and why is it’ (in fear
All silent to herself she spake) ‘that something strange seems here?’

Along the garden paths they walked—
The moon was at its height—
And lover-wise they strolled and talked,
But something was not right.
And ‘Who is that, now who is that, oh who is that,’ quoth she,
(All silent in her heart she spake) ‘that seems to follow me?’

They wandered back by beds of bloom;
They climbed a winding stair;
They crossed the threshold of their room,
But something waited there.
‘Now who is this, and what is this, and where is this,’ she cried,
(All silent was the cry she made) ‘that comes to haunt and hide?’

Wide-eyed she lay, the while he slept;
She could not name her fear.
But something from her bedside crept
Just as the dawn drew near,
(She did not know, she could not know—how could she know?—who came
To haunt the home of one whose hand had dug her grave of shame).

There was a man who killed a loving maid
In some mad mood of passion; and he paid
The price, upon a scaffold.  Now his name
Stands only as a synonym for shame.
There was another man, who took to wife
A loving woman.  She was full of life,
Of hope, and aspirations; and her pride
Clothed her like some rich mantle.

         First, the wide
Glad stream of life that through her veins had sway
He dammed by rocks, cast in it, day by day.
Her flag of hope, flung gaily to the world,
He placed half mast, and then hauled down, and furled.
The aspirations, breathing in each word,
By subtle ridicule, were made absurd:

So she was murdered, while the slow years went.
And her assassin, honoured, opulent,
Lived with no punishment, or social ban!
‘A good provider, a successful man.’

The bird flies home to its young;
The flower folds its leaves about an opening bud;
And in my neighbour’s house there is the cry of a child.
I close my window that I need not hear.

The bird flies home to its young;
The flower folds its leaves about an opening bud;
And in my neighbour’s house there is the cry of a child.
I close my window that I need not hear.

HE

SHE

A woman would speak last—
   Tell me my first grave error as a wife.

HE

SHE

HE

Your words cut deep; ’tis time we separate.

SHE

Well, each goes wiser to a newer mate.

How large thy task, O teacher of the young,
To take the ravelled threads by parents flung
With careless hands, and through consummate care
To weave a fabric, fine and firm and fair.
God’s uncompleted work is thine to do—
Be brave and true!

One day when England’s June was at its best,
I saw a stately and imperious swan
Floating on Avon’s fair untroubled breast.
Sudden, it seemed as if all strife had gone
Out of the world; all discord, all unrest.

The sorrows and the sinnings of the race
Faded away like nightmares in the dawn.
All heaven was one blue background for the grace
Of Avon’s beautiful, slow-moving swan;
And earth held nothing mean or commonplace.

Life seemed no longer to be hurrying on
With unbecoming haste; but softly trod,
As one who reads in emerald leaf, or lawn,
Or crimson rose a message straight from God.
. . . . .
On Avon’s breast I saw a stately swan.

It was long, long ago that a soul like a flower
Unfolded, and blossomed, and passed in an hour.
It was long, long ago; and the memory seems
Like the pleasures and sorrows that come in our dreams.

The kind years have crowned me with many a joy
Since the going away of my wee little boy;
Each one as it passed me has stooped with a kiss,
And left some delight—knowing one thing I miss.

But when in the park or the street, all elate
A baby I see in his carriage of state,
As proud as a king, in his little go-cart—
I feel all the mother-love stir in my heart!

I whisper a prayer as he rides down the street,
And my thoughts follow after him, tender and sweet;
For I know, by a law that is vast and divine,
(Though I know not his name) that the baby is mine!

I am running forth to meet you, O my Master,
For they tell me you are surely on the way;
Yes, they tell me you are coming back again
(While I run, while I run).
And I wish my feet were winged to speed on faster,
And I wish I might behold you here to-day,
Lord of men.

I am running, yet I walk beside my neighbour,
And I take the duties given me to do;
Yes, I take the daily duties as they fall
(While I run, while I run),
And my heart runs to my hand and helps the labour,
For I think this is the way that leads to you,
Lord of all.

I am running, yet I pause to greet my brother,
And I lean to rid my garden of its weed;
Yes, I lean, although I lift my thoughts above
(While I run, while I run).
And I think of that command, ‘Love one another,’
As I hear discordant sounds of creed with creed,
Lord of Love.

I am running, and the road is lit with splendour,
And it brightens and shines fairer with each span;
Yes, it brightens like the highway in a dream
(While I run, while I run).
And my heart to all the world grows very tender,
For I seem to see the Christ in every man,
Lord supreme.

Fame writes ever its song and story,
For heroes of war, in letters of glory.

But where is the story and where is the song
For the heroes of peace and the martyrs of wrong?

They fight their battles in shop and mine;
They die at their posts and make no sign.

They herd like beasts in a slaughter pen;
They live like cattle and suffer like men.

Why, set by the horrors of such a life,
Like a merry-go-round seems the battle’s strife,

And the open sea, and the open boat,
And the deadly cannon with bellowing throat.

Oh, what are they all, with death thrown in,
To the life that has nothing to lose or win—

Fame, where is your story and where is your song
For the martyrs of peace and the victims of wrong?

The greatest words are always solitaires,
   Set singly in one syllable; like birth,
   Life, love, hope, peace.  I sing the worth
Of that dear word toward which the whole world fares—
      I sing of home.

To make a home, we should take all of love
   And much of labour, patience, and keen joy;
   Then mix the elements of earth’s alloy
With finer things drawn from the realms above,
      The spirit home.

There should be music, melody and song;
   Beauty in every spot; an open door
   And generous sharing of the pleasure store
With fellow-pilgrims as they pass along,
      Seeking for home.

To narrow bounds let mirrors lend their aid
   And multiply each gracious touch of art;
   And let the casual stranger feel the part—
The great creative part—that love has played
      Within the home.

Here bring your best in thought and word and deed,
   Your sweetest acts, your highest self-control;
   Nor save them for some later hour and goal.
Here is the place, and now the time of need,
      Here in your home.

Time with his back against the mighty wall,
   Which hides from view all future joy and sorrow,
Hears, without answer, the impatient call
   Of puny man, to tell him of to-morrow.

Moral, be wise, and to the silence bow,
   These useless and unquiet ways forsaking;
Concern thyself with the Eternal Now—
   To-day hold all things, ready for thy taking.

If I were a man, a young man, and knew what I know to-day,
I would look in the eyes of Life undaunted
   By any Fate that might threaten me.
I would give to the world what the world most wanted—
   Manhood that knows it can do and be;
   Courage that dares, and faith that can see
   Clear into the depths of the human soul,
   And find God there, and the ultimate goal,
If I were a man, a young man, and knew what I know to-day.

Now much there is need of doing must not be done in haste;
   But slowly and with patience, as a jungle is changed to a town.
      But listen, my brothers, listen; it is not always so:
When a murderer’s hand is lifted to kill, there is no time to waste;
   And the way to change his purpose is first to knock him down
      And teach him the law of kindness after you give him the blow.

The ancient sin of the nations no law can ever efface;
   We must wait for the mothers of men to grow, and give clean souls to their sons.
      But listen, my brothers, listen—when a child cries out in pain,
We must rise from the banquet board and go, though the host is saying grace;
   We must rise and find the Herod of Greed, who is killing our little ones,
      Nor ever go back to the banquet until the monster is slain.

Fate used me meanly; but I looked at her and laughed,
That none might know how bitter was the cup I quaffed.
Along came Joy, and paused beside me where I sat,
Saying, ‘I came to see what you were laughing at.’

When the whole world resounds with rude alarms
Of warring arms,
When God’s good earth, from border unto border
Shows man’s disorder,
Let me not waste my dower of mortal might
In grieving over wrongs I cannot right.
This is my task: amid discordant strife
To keep a clean sweet centre in my life;
And though the human orchestra may be
Playing all out of key—
To tune my soul to symphonies above,
And sound the note of love.
This is my task.

When, in church pews, men worship God in words,
But meet their kind with swords,
When Fair Religion, stripped of holy passion,
Walks masked as Fashion,
Let me not wax indignant at the sight;
Or waste my strength bewailing her sad plight.
This is my task: to search in my own mind
Until the qualities of God I find;
To seek them in the hearts of friend and foe—
Or high or low;
And in my hours of toil, or prayer, or play,
To live my creed each day.
This is my task.