(Original)
Poland And America.
In imitation of Kingsley’s “Three Fishermen.”
I.
THERE is war in the East; there is war in the West;
Where morning breaks – where the sun goes down –
Men are rushing to battle with devilish zest,
And the war-din resoundeth from hamlet and town;
For the whirlwind of death o’er the nations must sweep,
And the flower of their sons must be slaughtered like sheep,
Though mothers and wives be moaning.
II.
Four armies are grappling round bastion and tower;
Four people are watching from city and town;
And the cannon they crash, and the bullets they shower,
And the landscape it loometh up blasted and brown;
For the blood of our brothers the valleys must steep,
While England looks listlessly over the deep,
Deaf, deaf to the pitiful meaning.
III.
A myriad corpses bestrew the lands,
Where morning dawns – where the day goeth down;
And the Furies are bursting Humanity’s bands,
And Ruin stalks grimly through country and town.
Oh! speak Lord! bid Peace from her slumbers up-leap,
That the dire “dogs of war” to their kennels may creep,
And an end to this horrible moaning!