English

( AFTER CAPORETTO )

I T was a black and baneful day
In Chivalry's decline
When Austria found her devil's-way
To break Savoia's line.
" Five nights from now, " the braggarts say,
" In Venice we shall dine. "

The true world's hope again burned low,
And doubt grew pale to see
The havoc of the wily blow,
And warned of worse to be;
But my Italian heart cried " No, "

And then, made free, through darkness dense and awful
I must perpetually in torment roam,
Bereft of any heaven, hope or home,
Such is God's fiat, cruel and unlawful,
Without a goal,
For his eventless, sluggish life of scorn
I, in my feeble innocence, must mourn;
I, his sad, stricken soul!

Soul of a Sleeping Man Speaks.

Life holds for me no future joy or sweetness,
My lofty mission here below has failed,
And my prayer's purity has not availed
To change the odium of my incompleteness;
No power above
Will free me from the forces that enmesh
My vital essence in this hateful flesh,

Then come with pomp and joy of color-streaming ships,
With shouts of their unshotted iron lips,
With choral song and no unnoble speech,
The good of all eclipsing good of each,
And, while like incense is the smoke upcurled,
Let this our child be sponsored by the world.

Then dedicate to dreams this dream fulfilled:
To Hope, the dream on which all dreams we build,
To Honor, what in honor was conceived,
To Brotherhood, whereby it was achieved,
To Peace, that there no hostile gun may sound

Servant of Man, well done!
Thy war of Peace is won.
The dream of continents five and centuries four
Is dream no more.

Now to new visions, than the old
More wonderful and bold.
Let sage and seer
Into the dark more confidently peer,
To find the boon in every shape of fear,
The cure that Nature holds for every hurt.
Now let some stripling, venturous and alert,
Trailing a wilder thought
Than Science yet has sought,
Startle shy Knowledge from her inner lair.

BROTHER of Man, all hail!
Through such as thee and those that with thee wrought
The world is daily saved — ay, ever saved shall be.
Not by some magic alchemy
By bended sages through the centuries sought;
Not by some cloistered mystery of life;
But by the sheer necessity of strife,
The long, unsacred treadmill of routine.
Oh, more puissant than the authentic mien
Of sceptred king or queen,
The virtues of the humble, ages-old,
That, like the Milky Way, forever hold
Their darkest night within a net of gold:

SOLDIER of Peaceful War!
Forgive us if our doubt shall mar
Thy victory, that has neither blot nor scar:
'T is for the moment, when the Muse's gaze
Wanders from thee. Our country is so dear
Her lovers may indulge a lover's fear.
Forgive us, too, a final word of praise:
That in these troublous days
Thy hand has written for the world to learn
A symphony of Labor, where we may discern
Life as a grander music than before.
Up to the heights that hide the sun
We hear the chorded tumult soar,

OS OLDIER of our Peace.
If in this conflict thy great work shall be
Not thoroughfare of Honor and Amity,
But route of Conquest, avenue of Hate,
Way of Cupidity and road to Wrong,
Better those hills had never heard the din
Of steam and rivet, and the strong
And jubilant song
Of thy triumphant army, with one purpose kin.
Before it be too late
Adjourn the exultation of the State:
Let it await
An Age of Reason's more propitious date.
Borrow a lustrum to undo the toil,
Unhinge each mighty gate

Since the world's turbulent prime
One war has never ceased — the war with Time:
Our one right war of conquest, yielding spoil
Of years, of hours, of minutes. Why this toil
To be companion to the cloud,
To whisper with the Antipodes,
And, where no blade had ever plowed,
To carve a path for argosies?
Why should we win, at equal cost
Of take and give,
Of gained and lost,
Leisure for leisure, but more worthily to live?

Why agonize and struggle for repose,
Remote, uncertain, and unseen, —

SOLDIER of Peace, all hail!
No longer by the Desperate Cape
Need the fagged mariner, within the maw
Of noonday darkness and the windy shape
Of winter gale,
Reef with his frozen hands the solid sail,
Praying, or cursing, as he thinks on pleached Panama.
More hopefully shall Commerce now let slip
Her homing pigeons, knowing every ship
Hath chance of fairer sky
Whether its course shall lie
From Oregon's dark forests to the cheer
Of proud Manhattan, bright and clear;