Classic Poem

( A Song for the Nations Submerged )

Oh, clear and high summons the trumpet
Before the gates of Dawn [.]

What tho' their ramparts be fallen,
Their streets with blood run red,
And over cradle and altar
The brute battalions tread;
Tho' gutted by flame their villages,
Tho' desolate byre and stead,
And ever for vengeance cry the bones
Of their unburied dead: —

Yet clear and high summons the trumpet
Before the gates of Dawn.

In the black slough of defeat
Still are their heads unbowed;
Defiant they front death still,
In their chains still proud;
But they all shall rise again: —
From the long dark shall they rise,
With the daybreak on their foreheads
And the New Dawn flooding their eyes,
To a new world purged with blood
As it never before has been, —
A world for justice, faith, good will
Made free at last and clean.

Oh, clear and high summon[s] the trumpets
Before the gates of Dawn.