More songs by the fighting men. Soldiers poets: second series/Ernest K. Challenger

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search

ERNEST K. CHALLENGER

Corporal, R.E.

The Harvest

SHADOWLESS lies the land
Under the sun,
Only the poplars stand
With moveless boughs in the heat
That broods o'er the blackened wheat
And the ground so hardly won.


No other tree in the waste.
They only stand
Where the straight white road is traced
Athwart the land.
And ever under the sky
Do the slow-winged birds go by—
The slow black birds of prey
That wait but the close of day
For the night to bring them food.


The curse of the heat is here,
And the curse of blood.
Cold-lipped, and with eyes of fear,
'Neath the sun's flood
Wanders the spirit of death;
And e'en in the burning noon is an icy breath
And the red of the west is to me like the redness of blood.


The village is still as the heat,
From the ruined houses start
The rats across the street.—
There is never another sound,
For the guns are silent to-day,
And the endless lines of men that are bound
For the place of death and the nameless mound
Have taken another way.


At the end of the ruined street
Roodless the church yet stands
To the God men praise with their lips
While they mock Him with their hands;
With hands that have scrawled for sport
Their jests on the altar-stone,
And their ribald words on the lips of Christ,
The marred Christ hanging alone.


Who has measured pain,
And who has a plumb for that sea
Where the soul shall know again
Its own immensity?
For the voice of the mind is dumb,
But the voice of the soul is heard,
Where the wild dark waters are come
And the face of man's sky is blurred.


Who shall say "Lo here
Shall the glory of war be found,
That a nation arose without fear
And smote her foe to the ground
For the wrong that he dared to dream,
And the hell that he wrought on earth;
That she pressed after Honour's gleam
Though it led to a land of dearth"?


Who has measured wrong,
And who shall assign it a bond?
Where the scornful might of the strong
And the cry of the weak be found—
Say, is the tale complete?
Ah! myriad wrongs spring up
Where one has set its feet,
And the earth is a poisoned cup
Where the goodly wine brings death,
And one drop of venom there
Shall poison the very breath
Of the winds in the upper air.


What of the men who died
Stout-hearted and steadfast-eyed
For the good they might not share
And the goal to them denied?
For the lamp they strove to bear
Should light another's way,
And the boon that they might not share
Is the boon we hold to-day.


What of the god-like men
Who lie in the dust to-day
For the dreams that we hold so light
And the hope that we fling away?
Ah! shall we not vex their sleep,
We men of the lesser mould,
Who sully the name they bled to keep,
And the honour they died to hold?


A thousand ages ago
Man fought with the axe of stone
That the many might seize the thing they loved
From the few, and hold it alone.
For the will of the strong was law
And the right of the weak was death
When man was one with the beasts of the earth
And battled with them for breath.


And to-day with their coward lips
Men prate of love in their creeds,
And a thousand times to-day
Do they spurn her with their deeds.
For we talk of the law of truth
While our God is the law of might,
And the will of the strongest there
Is the thing we hold as right.


What have we gained with the years,
But the greater power to lie?
We, who speak of the truth,
Smooth-voiced and with side-long eye;
Better the axe of stone
And the feet on the weakest throat
Than the lying lips and the coward thrust
And the stealthy eyes that gloat.


Now for the one's desire
Shall the many be crucified
On the cross of a lawless power
With the nails of a soulless pride.
And the wrong goes deeper yet,
Aye, deep as the springs of life,
And has blossomed out at the 'hest of pride
In the deadly flower of strife.


And nothing shall purge the land
Where the curse of sin has stood
But the purge of the whetted steel
And the drench of blood.
While perchance at the end shall Peace
Her impotent pinions spread
O'er the ruined home and the smoking land
And the blank eyes of our dead.


Hark!—through the lazy air
Comes the sound of guns again.
Once more man reaps with a sickle of fire
The harvest of the slain.

Pont d'Essars, France.