Classic Poem

Now let the people stand and take great heed—
The time is ripe for the immortal deed,
The call is loud for the untrammeled man
To execute God's plan.
Men have gone back unto their primal greed,
On all the hopes of earth have they gone back,
Traitors to faith and every human creed—
Justice and Life and Truth are on the rack
A Monster crouches on the breast of Time,
Fiercer than Molloch, filthier than crime,
A Monster foaming drunk with human gore—
Poets may sing their battle hymns no more.
Poets no more their battle songs may raise,
Nor priest nor patriot sound their putrid praise—
Their blasphemies were smitten from the pen,
Their voices hushed by shrieks of dying men.
Let him who tries
To light his lyric by those crimson skies
Look on this Monster with the hideous head,
White with the staring eyeballs of the dead.
Let him behold the Terror face to face,
Demon of death, destroyer of the race.
O world, what is this Horror ye have spawned?
In every land where human hope has dawned,
Straddling the scarlet centuries of waste,
Travels the awful Shape that Greed has traced.
Here have men fawned
And offered up their veins in every age
To feed his rage
Rome pampered him and Carthage gave her strength;
Down all the ancient length
Of Babylon and Ninevah and Tyre
His hunger made of earth a funeral pyre.
Proud Egypt poured
Armies and ships and men, a precious hoard,
And lavish Persia gave her thousand fleets,
Yet all Time's judgment seats
And all Time's penitence may not atone
For broken mother hearts that bled alone.
Art, commerce, industry and human fate,
These have we fed the fiend insatiate
Man's genius, that should save and not destroy,
Has been his toy
And gold that should be building up the race,
Feeding a starved and martyred populace
Has gone to glut the Creature's grinning jaws
And magnify his cause.
Rulers of blood, from Nero back to Cain,
And onward to this present hour of pain,
Have gorged him with their million, million slain.
Assyria gave her host of flashing spears,
And France and England for a hundred years,
Yet none have answered for the people's tears.
What are we waiting for? And can we wait
While at our gate
This red colossal Shape of armored Strife
Fastens its fangs upon the throat of Life?
Whose dragon wings, unfurled,
Drip blood … and blood … and blood upon the world?
Wait! While the demon rears, death-shod,
Belching his scorn upon the plans of God,
His bloated belly yawning for its spoils,
Progress and power crushed within his toils?
What are we waiting for? Does no one dare
To meet the grinning Terror, stare for stare?
Lives there no spirit strong enough to spring
God-armed, God-panoplied, straight at the vitals of the hideous Thing?
Are we so caught within the Creature's spell,
Like children babbling at the door of hell,
We have no will to conquer, to compel?
May not a whole world rise
And fling its protest to the bleeding skies?

A Monster sprawls upon the breast of Time—
To question or to hesitate were crime,
While o'er those awful battlefields of hate
The mothers gaze, too late!
It is the world-command, God's judgment call,
Greater than all.
The hour is here for the immortal deed;
For huge, majestic action we have need—
Now let the people stand—and take great heed!