Classic Poem

I WAKE in the night,
And sudden my eyes grope,
High through the dark of the battlefields,
For the place where he is flying
Through thin perilous ether.
In cold dizzy heights
Over the foe I see him,
His soaring plane in a swirl of clouds hidden,
And he, my little boy,
Who once crawled at my feet,
Nor dared to take three steps across my chamber,
He the eagle soul of it!

Ah yes, I see and hear him,
There in the earthless chill,
With iron talons ready
To release swift bombs on sleeping Rhine cities.
And though I know that some of them may fall
On simple homes where children dream
As once he dreamt beside me,
I cry him on through the sky's sickening hazard—
That Freedom may not perish
And a myriad martyr mother-hearts
In the years to come be wakened
By the high whirring wings that mean destruction.
I cry him on! …
And yet how terrible
That out of the nest even the young must spring
To be—thus—Humanity's war-eagles!