Page:Armistice Day.djvu/243

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THE NEW VICTORY
221

So will the other groups of our nation say when they realize that the issue presses and the need for them to speak is at hand.


THE NEW VICTORY

BY MARGARET WIDDEMER

Victory comes:
Not hard and laughing as she came of yore,
Her scarlet arms heaped high with spoils of war;
Her slaves, to beating drums,
Low-bent and bearing gifts....
The black cloud lifts,
And, lifting our long-weary eyes to see,
There dawns upon our sight,
Majestic, crowned with light,
Stern and so quiet—she must keep her strength
To build at weary length
Over again, our scarred and shattered world—
This, then, ah, this is she,
Our graver Victory.


She follows down the furrows
War-turned across the world,
Where still the spent shell burrows,
Where the black shot was hurled,
And sows the wheat and corn.
The world, from anguish born