No More Learning

On thy white tablets, cleansed of royal stain,
What message to the future mayst thou write! --
The People's Law, the bulwark of their reign,
And vigilant Liberty, of ancient might,
And Brotherhood, that can alone lead to the loftiest height.

Take, then, our hearts' rejoicing overflow,
Thou new-born daughter of Democracy,
Whose coming sets the expectant earth aglow.
Soon the glad skies thy proud new flag shall see,
And hear thy chanted hymns of hope for Russia new and free.

_Robert Underwood Johnson_

_April, 1917_




ITALY IN ARMS


Of all my dreams by night and day,
One dream will evermore return,
The dream of Italy in May;
The sky a brimming azure urn
Where lights of amber brood and burn;
The doves about San Marco's square,
The swimming Campanile tower,
The giants, hammering out the hour,
The palaces, the bright lagoons,
The gondolas gliding here and there
Upon the tide that sways and swoons.

The domes of San Antonio,
Where Padua 'mid her mulberry-trees
Reclines; Adige's crescent flow
Beneath Verona's balconies;
Rich Florence of the Medicis;
Sienna's starlike streets that climb
From hill to hill; Assisi well
Remembering the holy spell
Of rapt St. Francis; with her crown
Of battlements, embossed by time,
Stern old Perugia looking down.

Then, mother of great empires, Rome,
City of the majestic past,
That o'er far leagues of alien foam
The shadows of her eagles cast,
Imperious still; impending, vast,

The Colosseum's curving line;
Pillar and arch and colonnade;
St. Peter's consecrated shade,
And Hadrian's tomb where Tiber strays;
The ruins on the Palatine
With all their memories of dead days.

And Naples, with her sapphire arc
Of bay, her perfect sweep of shore;
Above her, like a demon stark,
The dark fire-mountain evermore
Looming portentous, as of yore;
Fair Capri with her cliffs and caves;
Salerno drowsing 'mid her vines
And olives, and the shattered shrines
Of Paestum where the gray ghosts tread,
And where the wilding rose still waves
As when by Greek girls garlanded.

But hark! What sound the ear dismays,
Mine Italy, mine Italy?
Thou that wert wrapt in peace, the haze
Of loveliness spread over thee!
Yet since the grapple needs must be,
I who have wandered in the night
With Dante, Petrarch's Laura known,
Seen Vallombrosa's groves breeze-blown,
Met Angelo and Raffael,
Against iconoclastic might
In this grim hour must wish thee well!

_Clinton Scollard_




ON THE ITALIAN FRONT, MCMXVI


"I will die cheering, if I needs must die;
So shall my last breath write upon my lips
_Viva Italia!
_ when my spirit slips
Down the great darkness from the mountain sky;
And those who shall behold me where I lie
Shall murmur: 'Look, you! how his spirit dips
From glory into glory! the eclipse
Of death is vanquished! Lo, his victor-cry! '

"Live, thou, upon my lips, Italia mine,
The sacred death-cry of my frozen clay!
Let thy dear light from my dead body shine
And to the passer-by thy message say:
'_Ecco! _ though heaven has made my skies divine,
My sons' love sanctifies my soil for aye! '"

_George Edward Woodberry_




AUSTRALIA TO ENGLAND


By all the deeds to Thy dear glory done,
By all the life blood, spilt to serve Thy need,
By all the fettered lives Thy touch hath freed,
By all Thy dream in us anew begun;
By all the guerdon English sire to son
Hath given of highest vision, kingliest deed,
By all Thine agony, of God decreed
For trial and strength, our fate with Thine is one.

Still dwells Thy spirit in our hearts and lips,
Honour and life we hold from none but Thee,
And if we live Thy pensioners no more
But seek a nation's might of men and ships,
'T is but that when the world is black with war
Thy sons may stand beside Thee strong and free.

_Archibald T. Strong_

_August, 1914_




CANADA TO ENGLAND


Great names of thy great captains gone before
Beat with our blood, who have that blood of thee:
Raleigh and Grenville, Wolfe, and all the free
Fine souls who dared to front a world in war.
Such only may outreach the envious years
Where feebler crowns and fainter stars remove,
Nurtured in one remembrance and one love
Too high for passion and too stern for tears.

O little isle our fathers held for home,
Not, not alone thy standards and thy hosts
Lead where thy sons shall follow, Mother Land:
Quick as the north wind, ardent as the foam,
Behold, behold the invulnerable ghosts
Of all past greatnesses about thee stand.

_Marjorie L. C. Pickthall_




LANGEMARCK AT YPRES


This is the ballad of Langemarck,
A story of glory and might;
Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part
In the great grim fight.