has died,
If it be proven that I am he
Who being questioned denied?

THE CHOICE

1917

(THE AMERICAN SPIRIT SPEAKS)

_To the Judge of Right and Wrong
With Whom fulfilment lies
Our purpose and our power belong,
Our faith and sacrifice._

Let Freedom's Land rejoice!
Our ancient bonds are riven;
Once more to us the eternal choice
Of Good or Ill is given.

Not at a little cost,
Hardly by prayer or tears,
Shall we recover the road we lost
In the drugged and doubting years.

But, after the fires and the wrath,
But, after searching and pain,
His Mercy opens us a path
To live with ourselves again.

In the Gates of Death rejoice!
We see and hold the good--
Bear witness, Earth, we have made our choice
With Freedom's brotherhood!

Then praise the Lord Most High
Whose Strength hath saved us whole,
Who bade us choose that the Flesh should die
And not the living Soul!

_To the God in Man displayed--
Where e'er we see that Birth,
Be love and understanding paid
As never yet on earth!_

_To the Spirit that moves in Man,
On Whom all worlds depend,
Be Glory since our world began
And service to the end!_

THE HOLY WAR

1917

('For here lay the excellent wisdom of him that built Mansoul that the
walls could never be broken down nor hurt by the most mighty adverse
potentate unless the townsmen gave consent thereto'--BUNYAN'S _Holy
War_)

_A tinker out of Bedford,
A vagrant oft in quod,
A private under Fairfax,
A minister of God--
Two hundred years and thirty
Ere Armageddon came
His single hand portrayed it,
And Bunyan was his name!_

He mapped, for those who follow,
The world in which we are--
'This famous town of Mansoul'
That takes the Holy War
Her true and traitor people,
The gates along her wall,
From Eye Gate unto Feel Gate,
John Bunyan showed them all.

All enemy divisions,
Recruits of every class,
And highly-screened positions
For flame or poison-gas,
The craft that we call modern,
The crimes that we call new,
John Bunyan had 'em typed and filed
In Sixteen Eighty-two

Likewise the Lords of Looseness
That hamper faith and works,
The Perseverance-Do