Voices and visions :: :: University of Virginia Library

I heard how the chords of her great gold harp shall wait on her white hand's flash,
With music now like the break of a brook and now like the whirlwind's crash.

Then her voice, in my vision, skyward soared, with sublimity of release,
And she sang me her song that the world awaits. 'Twas the Battle Song of Peace.

‘Day had come. Fate spoke. No tarriance, now; no manœuvre of shift and screen;
Only two vast armies face to face, with a vast bare plain between.

‘Ere the reddening east from startled stars their last vague silver stole,
I unsheathed my sword, bade our clarions play and our drums defiance roll.

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‘At the enemy's lines full speed we plunged; they marked us, intent to spring;
And then, while the lurid sun lurched up, did our battle reel and ring.

‘My troops of Charity massed their might as the great gales mass the tide,
And shoulder to shoulder poured hot shot on the ranks of Civic Pride.

‘With homespun serge o'er their stout young hearts, my hordes of Humanity dashed
At the dainty and picked-out clans of Caste, white-gauntleted, silken-sashed.

‘Sharpshooters all were the soldieries of Ambition, Hate and Greed;
They sidled rearward, they slipped like snakes, while scattering deadly seed.

‘But the Warriors Born were bolder far; they pushed us with haughty stress,
Till shelled by our batteries on the heights, from Fort Loving-Kindliness.

‘To Order and Wisdom and Law, staunch Aides, I would murmur my brief commands,
And lightning-like would they leap to obey through our smoke-entangled bands.

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‘The Makers of Money from Politics were a cohort fierce and foul,
But our Makers of Money from Honest Toil held chat with them, cheek by jowl.

‘The Cut-Throats Commercial were firm at first, but we routed them till they ran,
With our big battalions of Peace on Earth, our brigades “Good Will to Man.”

‘Then at last from a woodside's muffling boughs, on their steeds that reared and neighed,
The Scorners of Arbitration rushed, an imperious cavalcade.

‘“Have at them!” I heard old Justice cry, through the fitful dins and flares,
And his horsemen, bannered “Thou Shalt not Kill,” came thundering thick on theirs.

‘All the air clashed, roared; it was wrath against wrath, it was frenzy with frenzy at bay;
They were fighting to keep the whole world in their clutch; we were fighting to tear it away.

‘In our strength we trusted, yet dared not exult, for we knew them a host grim, strong;
And we knew that though ours was the right, still the right had too oft been crushed by the wrong.

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‘So the turmoils of onslaught grew terribler yet, while from zenith to verge day passed,
And I wondered its globe did not pause for sheer awe, and like Joshua's watch us aghast.

‘But by eve strife ended; the conquest was ours; all opponents that yet lived had fled. ...
As I leaned on my sword in the dimness I heard many voices that called “War is Dead.”

‘Then they brought me to where archangelic he lay, on a sweep of the blood-soaked sod,
With the hilt of a shattered blade in his hand, with the brows and brawn of a god.

‘And I stooped, stung by pity, beside his grand form, while the zephyrs of twilight veered south,
And I that am woman, I, Peace, laid my lips on his cruel and beautiful mouth.

‘And I said: “Throw about him the purples of pomp: let his tomb like a king's be built;
Let the fame of his courage be legended clear, but forbear to emblazon his guilt.”

‘Nay, to them that grouped round me with marvelling looks, from the deeps of my pity I said:
“Though alive I have loathed him through thousands of years, thus I pardon him now, being dead!”‘