Classic Poem

Can truth lose charm,
Can love turn back to history?
The faithful follow with sad eyes
The retreat of the old Enemy.

Peace tastes as if defeat
In those battle-fed mouths
Which long no other glut knew
Than banquets to the brave.

Vanished the hosts of lies
That by the gracious standard
They hotly persecuted
With righteous war wraths.

And, loyal to vexedness,
They fret away the sweetened light,
Mourning the bitterness and flash
As ghosts the living mourn.