ed, are ashamed
Of the familiar thought
That waste of blood is honourable feud:
Little by little from the wondering land
The agitation and the lie of war
Shall pass; for in the heart disclaimed
Murder shall be abandoned by the hand.
And while there grows a fellowship of unshed blood
To stop the wound and heal the scar
Of time, with sudden glorious aptitude
Woman assumes her part. Her pity in a flood
Flings down the gate.
She has been made to wait
Too long, undreaming and untaught
The touch and beauty of democracy.
But, entering now the strife
In which her saving sense is due,
She watches and she grows aware,
Holding a child more dear than property,
That the many perish to empower the few,
That homeless politics have split apart
The common country of the human heart.
(Your heart is beating, Celia, like a song!)
.... For man has need
Not merely of the lips that kiss and hands that feed
But of the hearts that heed
And of the minds that speed
Like rain.
Loving a mother or a wife,
Let him release her tenderness, to make him strong,
And use her beauty and receive her law:
The very life of life.

In temporary pain
The age is bearing a new breed
Of men and women, patriots of the world
And one another. Boundaries in vain,
Birthrights and countries, would constrain
The old diversity of seed
To be diversity of soul.
O mighty patriots, maintain
Your loyalty!--till flags unfurled
For battle shall arraign
The traitors who unfurled them, shall remain
And shine over an army with no slain,
And men from every nation shall enroll
And women--in the hardihood of peace!
What can my anger do but cease?
Whom shall I fight and who shall be my enemy
When he is I and I am he?

Let me have done with that old God outside
Who watched with preference and answered prayer,
The Godhead that replied
Now here, now there,
Where heavy cannon were
Or coins of gold!
Let me receive communion with all men,
Acknowledging our one and only soul!
For not till then
Can God be God, till we ourselves are whole.

VI

Once in a smoking-car, I saw a scene
That made my blood stand still....
While the sun smouldered in a great ravine,
And I, with elbow on the window-sill,
Was watching the dim ember of the west,
Half-heard, but poignant as a bell
For fire, there came a moan; the voice of one in hel