Poor little human minds

That seek in armaments their strength or their disguise;
The trumpet blares how we are weakly wise,

The bugle blows our justice to the winds.

VII

Today

In black humiliation stand we all,
Seeing, how like a house of cards,
Similitudes, with no essential stay,
Shards, useless shards,

Civilization's boasted structures fall.

Not force, but wisdom, be our shield,

And our sword justice, man's divinest power!

For when these twain, that make us more than beast,

Sway all the earth, war shall have ceased.

And it may be that this disgraceful hour

Will from its shadows still the sunlight yield

The sunlight of high peace, which man's rebirth shall see.

His soul from the great vulture, War, set free, O God, set free! -The New York Times.

THE VINTAGE

BY CLINTON SCOLLARD

Rumors of ravaging war perturb the mind,
Ruffling the channels of our wonted ease;
Within the sky we read red auguries,
And hear grim portents shivering down the wind.
Not as aforetime do we fondly find

Orchestral notes or lulling harmonies

In the long plunge and murmur of the seas,
But discords horrent unto all mankind!

The fields of France are bright with poppy flowers;
Along the terraced vineyards by the Rhine
The ripening grapes are crimsoning for the wine;
Beneath the sun what fairer sight to see!

But ere the march of many hastening hours,
What will the bloom, what will the vintage be?
-The Sun.

THE RECKONING

BY CLINTON SCOLLARD

What do they reck who sit aloof on thrones,
Or in the chambered chancelleries apart,
Playing the game of state with subtle art,
If so be they may win, what wretched groans
Rise from red fields, what unrecorded bones

Bleach within shallow graves, what bitter smart
Pierces the widowed or the orphaned heart-
The unhooded horror for which naught atones!

A word, a pen stroke, and this might not be!
But vengeance, power lust, festering jealousy,
Triumph, and grim carnage stalks abroad.
Hark! Hear that ominous bugle on the wind!
And they who might have stayed it, shall they find
No reckoning within the courts of God?

-The Sun.

THE WAR OF KINGS

BY CLINTON SCOLLARD

From dawn to dusk reign horror and affright,
And the sad night no healing respite brings;
In all its hideous panoply of might,

This is the war of kings!

The people are but pawns upon the board;

What of their wants, their woes, their sufferings?

Speak, Death, dark watcher both by field and ford,
In this grim war of kings!

Will history still repeat the sanguine past,

With all its trail of ruthless anguishings? Oh, may this slaughter-carnival be the lastThe last dread war of kings!

-The Outlook.

AMERICA

BY CONRAD AIKEN

We lay and smiled, to see our sky
So blue, so luminous with sun;
Lo, far off, wailed an ominous cry;
We heard a thunder of footsteps run

Under a darkness settling there,

Some huge and sinister wing's eclipse;
Smoke fouled the east; a baleful glare
Lightened beneath; and maddened lips

Took up that cry, while darkness stirred
And heaved, and like a wounded thing
Bled, by the utterance of one word

Which bade a myriad war-swords sing.

What murderous shadow troubled so

Our summer dream? . . . The sunlight ceased.

A sick and fetid wind came slow

From the stale tenements of the east.

Brother to slay his brother rose,

The shambles fell, and from that gloom

Came the hoarse herded cry of those
Who blindly massed to fight for room.

Room! Give us air! A breathing space!
The sunlight and the land for all!

Each lifted up a stifled face,

And battered door, and beat at wall,

And surged against resurgent horde
For space to sow his little seed.

Lo, they would plow the earth with sword,
Strew dead on earth that earth might feed.

And we-where now our summer bliss?
From the stale tenements of the east
Stole fear lest we should come to this,
And prove us brother to the beast.

-The Outlook.

WAR AND DEATH

BY HELEN COALE GREW

Two figures out of the gloom of despair on man's vision broke;
And one, colossal, brute-visaged, vengeful, and pitiless, spoke-

"I am War! And behold in the courts of the gods none is greater than I!
Earth quivers and reels at my gauntlet's touch, and the dome of the sky
Is shattered and torn by my trumpet's blare and the flash of my sword;
And man at my coming is fearful and fain of the help of the Lord.
Yea, black is the doom that I spread on the world, and the ruin is wide.
Man may pray himself dumb! Can he slay me in fear who begot me in
pride?"

But he, the other, benignant, pitying, quiet of breath,

Smiled, "You shall know me and fear me not. I am but Death!" -The Outlook.

PEACE

BY EDWIN MARKHAM

Who are the ghosts in flight

Where siege guns spat their rage upon the night?
What shapes are those that shiver in the moon
About the towers and banners of Verdun?
And what those cries at night on hill and tarn
Down the long ruined Valley of the Marne?
They are the ghosts that cannot rest, that cry
Because there was no need to die.

And look, on the north still runs a line of fire
Where armies struggle in the battle-mire!
And yonder, see the crimson battle-rain
Upon the height of Aisne!

And farther still upon the cliffs of Oise

That streaming banners and the loud huzzahs,
And far upon the east the marching masses
Are pouring thru the wild Carpathian passes;
And the bright quiet flood

Of Vistula is red with brother's blood.

Peace, peace, O men, for ye are brothers all-
Ye in the trench and on the shattered wall.
Do ye not know ye came

Out of one Love and wear one sacred name?

Let there be no more battles; earth is old
With sorrows; let the weary banners fold.
And the grim cannons spewing death on men,
They, too, are weary and would sleep again.
And they have drunk enough, the battle blades-
Enough, God knows, are laid asleep with spades.
Yes, there are ghosts enough hurled on ahead,
Choking the shadowy passes of the dead.

Peace, brothers; let the music of the loom
Help us a little to forget the doom.
Yes, let the busy whisper of the wheel
And the bright furrow of the happy keel,
Help to forget the rage of sword and flame,
And wrongs that are too terrible for name.
And let the grasses hurry to the graves
To cover them with ripple of green waves;
And where the fields ran reddest in wild hours,
Let Mercy hide them with a foam of flowers.

O brothers, lift a cry, a long world-cry
Sounding from sky to sky-

The cry of one great word,

Peace, peace, the world-will clamoring to be heard

A cry to break the ancient battle-ban,

To end it in the sacred name of Man!

-The New York American.