For not in quiet English fields Are these, our brothers, laid to rest. Where we might deck their broken shields With all the flowers the dead love best. For some are by the Delhi walls, And many in the Afghan land, And many where the Ganges falls Through seven mouths of shifting sand. Possess the flower of English land- Lips that thy lips shall kiss no more, Hands that shall never clasp thy hand. Ruin and wreck are at our side, Grim warders of the House of pain.
Wild grasses are their burial-sheet, And sobbing waves their threnody.
Yet when this fiery web is spun, Her watchmen shall decry from far The young Republic like a sun Rise from these crimson seas of war. The better laurels of a soldier's crown, That not dishonored should thy soul go down To tell the mighty Sire of thy race That France hath kissed the mouth of Liberty, And found it sweeter than his honeyed bees, And that the giant wave Democracy Breaks on the shores where Kings lay couched at ease. On the Massacre of the Christians in Bulgaria. Witness the men of Piedmont, chiefest care Of Cromwell, when with impotent despair The Pontiff in his painted portico Trembled before our stern embassadors. Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reign Arts, Culture, Reverence, Honor, all things fade, Save Treason and the dagger of her trade, And Murder with his silent bloody feet.