Classic Poem

At dead of night, on a haunted height,
Wierd spirits sung,
“Time is old and Time is young.”
Naiads and Undines, fresh and fair,
With bright sea-pearls in their golden hair;
Gnomes and Satyrs, grim and gray,
Brownies wrinkled and Fairies gay,
All together in chorus sung;
“Time is old and Time is young!”
Till arch and aisle in Cloudland rung:
“Time is old and Time is young!”
Then all the brazen bells below
Went reeling, rollicking to and fro,
And every one, with its iron tongue,
Said or sung:
“Time is old and Time is young!
Young, young, young, young,
Time is old and Time is young!”
And the new-born year, on pinions light,
Flitted over the shores of night;
Over the dreary Arctic land,
Over the tropics bright and bland,
Over the mountains, over the sea,
Swift as a meteor's flash went he—
Lightly touching all earthly things
With the viewless tips of his mystic wings.
But all the life in his heart congealed,
His sight grew dim and his senses reeled,
When he came to a new-fought battlefield.
The waves of a river ran blood-red,
And the ground was covered with ghastly dead,
Lying in heaps where they fought and fell,
Mangled and torn by shot and shell,
In the fire and hail of the battle's hell.
Here was Atrunk with a bleeding heart,
Trampled down in the seething sod;
There a head with the lips apart,
As the dying groan went up to the throne
Of a pitying God.
Here was a foot with a silver spur,
And there on the sand a milk-white hand
With the troth-plight ring of a lady dear.
Alas! for the pain, so bitter and vain,
Of her who will clasp it never again.
Alas, and alas, for her!
“What horror is this?” asked the startled year
Of a soldier digging a grave-trench near.
“Only a sortie,” the soldier said;
“They left us, you see, to bury the dead.”
“But what is the cause of this terrible war?
What are the nations fighting for?”
Dropping his pickaxe, after a pause,
The man replied: “Well, as to the cause,
It was, I think, some offensive thing
The Emperor said to our Prussian king.”
Then lighting his pipe and singing a stave,
He picked away at the long, deep grave.
“Small cause for all this terrible strife,
This waste of treasure and this waste of life.”
Mused Seventy-one.
“Small cause for woe, and wail, and tears,
And blighted lands for scores of years;
For all the suffering and despair
That human hearts can feel and bear
Beneath the sun.
But whether the cause be foul or just,
This strain and struggle may rend apart
The fetters and chains that rankle and rust
To the core of the Old World's heart.
No matter what crowns are won or lost,
The fire and flame of the holocaust
May bring a nobler birth—
May hasten the time when czars and kings,
Kaisers and princes, and all such things,
Shall find no place on the earth.”