And ghastliest far among them all Where torn and stained the thirsty sod With carnage reeks--where standards fly, And horses gallop, iron-shod, Are those remorseless mockeries The wars they wage in name of God.
Vague, dim and vague, and noiselessly, The Warrior's triumphs fade like haze; And building winds have heaped the sands O'er monuments of martial days; While Legend throws a flickering gleam Where the tall Trojan towers blaze.
Yea! whether sought for Woman's face Or, Conquest-seeking, seaward poured, Or at the beck of Holy Church War still shall be the thing abhorred; And they who by the sword would live Shall surely perish by the sword.
Yet whether at Thermopylæ Where battled the intrepid Greek, Or Waterloo--their quarry still The red-eyed ravening vultures seek; Where prowl the jackal and the fox And the swart raven whets his beak.
And somewhere, though by Alien seas The tide of Hate unceasing frets; For dawn to dusk, and dusk to dawn The red sun rises, no, nor sets, Save where the wraith of War is seen Above her glittering bayonets.
How fared the body when the soul In olden days had taken flight? Had passed as through a shutter slips A trembling shaft of summer light! And all that once was Life's warm glow Had sudden changed to dreadful night!
How fared the mourners; how the Priest; How spoken his funereal theme? What dirges for the Heroic dead What flowers to soften death's extreme? Was Life to them a wayside Inn Death the beginning of a dream?
We cannot know; except by tales Caught in the traveller's flying loom, Or carven granite friezes found Or parchment penned in convent gloom; Or here and there, defying Time Some long-dead Emperor's giant tomb.
Where tower the steep Egyptian cones By couriers of the storm bestrid, Wrapped in his blackening cerements Sahura lies in shadow hid, While billowy sand-curves rise and dash Like surf, against his Pyramid.
And on the bald Norweyan shores When Odin for the Viking came, A ship was launched, and on it placed With solemn state, the Hero's frame; The torch applied, and sent to sea, A double burial,--wave and flame.
And when the Hindu Prince lay prone-- In final consecration dire His Hindu Princess followed on And climbed the blazing funeral pyre, To stand in living sacrifice Transfigured in her robes of fire.