Classic Poem

Such was the woman's prayer—God's mighty daughter.
Who giveth every man his birth to time;
Will she, then, longer give her sons for slaughter
When she has power of law to bar the crime
That blasts the very image of God's face
In her dear child—the child of all the race?

Through smoke of battle, all the deadly stifle
Of poisoned air, the rumbling cannonade,
The ceaseless, quick staccato of the rifle,
The pallid harvest in the trenches laid;
The hail of death that scatters from the skies,
And all the horror vain ambition buys;

Through frivolries of vogue and freaks of fashion,
The greed of trade, the scheme of jealousy,
The base design, the worse than brutal passion,
There comes the dawning of reality;
And bells shall ring in all the towers of strife
Proclaiming Love the conqueror of life.

I see the promise of a juster order
Where righteousness is honoured and shall win;
Where worth, not wealth, is made a self-rewarder
By taking all the profit out of sin.
Earth is at springtide; every heart is young,
And hope is rife on every human tongue.

Man's faith shall find a surer lamp to guide him
To bolder courage in the ways of peace,
For woman's lofty wing shall soar beside him
And stir his best endeavour to release;
Shall lead him greatly to his highest goal
And love him to the summits of his soul.

She searches all the hidden depths within him
And finds him far more noble than he knew;
'Tis love's last, best expedient to win him
And make him great and godlike through and through.
He rises to the promise of that gleam,
Resolved to realize her golden dream.

But in the finding of that lode of treasure,—
Those powers divine that in his spirit hide—
She too has climbed, in fuller, loftier measure,
To be the splendour she has glorified.
Now, where man's broken strongholds lately stood,
Rise to the blue, the towers of womanhood.