WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
The coat without a seam, and other poems cover

The coat without a seam, and other poems

Chapter 25: TO BELGIUM CROWNED WITH THORNS
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

This collection of lyric and narrative poems moves between wartime urgency and reflective peace, offering sonnets, elegies, and short lyrics that interrogate sacrifice, patriotism, and the yearning for reconciliation. Voices range from public banners and martial images to intimate meditations on grief, domestic memory, and nature. Frequent religious and moral imagery frames contemplations of duty, loss, and the possibility of a unified humanity. Formal variety includes sonnet sequences and freer lyrics, often balancing didactic rhetoric with tender observation to consider how communities and individuals reckon with conflict, remembrance, and the promise of healing.

TO BELGIUM
CROWNED WITH THORNS

Thou that a brave, brief space didst keep the gate
Against the German, saving all the West
By the subjection of thy shielding breast
To the brute blows and utmost shames of Fate;
Thou that in bonds of iron dost expiate
Thy nobleness as crime! Even thus oppressed,
Is not thy spirit mystically blest,
O little Belgium, marvellously great?
Thou that hast prized the soul above the flesh,
Dost thou not, starving, eat of angels’ bread?
With every sunrise crucified afresh,
Has not this guerdon for all time sufficed—
That thou shouldst wear upon thy haggard head
The awful honor of the Crown of Christ?