C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Jefferson Butler Fletcher (1865–1946)
Poems of the Great War: “Who Only Stand and Wait”
O
Unmongrelized by helot hordes that wealth
Lured overseas to serve its hard blind need,
Days when disloyalty was not by stealth
Bred into boys and girls by cracked old maids
And smooth-tongued traitors, days of the soul’s health
Unsicklied by excesses and parades
Of shoddy, days when yet unfleshed in loot
The United States were not the United Trades,
United—for profit and in ill repute!
They gave a square deal then, and got one, too:
Who Uncle Sam affronted felt his boot.
He listens now to an unpeaceful crew
That feigns demurest peace, and cries for peace.
(But cuckoos just as doves can cry coo-coo,
And most thieves would cry quits with the police.)
So Uncle Sam the second rôle has learned
In this amusing game of “Fox and Geese.”
Indeed, he will not mind if he is spurned,
For righteous anger, self-restrained from act,
Turns callousness, and suffers unconcerned
That for which honor were instant to exact
Stern reparation. The Great Refusal made,
Unto the measure must our souls contract
Of that curst neutral folk which Dante flayed.
Dante, thou shouldst be living in this hour,
This land hath need of thee. She is a maid
Of age uncertain. In her ivory tower
She sitteth cutting coupons, having fits
For fear some knight should see her, and deflower.
Oh, thou mightst teach her to take off her mitts
And grasp, a queen, the sword at honor’s call.
(The gesture might impress, I fancy, unser Fritz.)
Forgive me, who must utter after all
Thoughts that do lie too deep for jests. Indeed,
“I am not Æneas, neither am I Paul.”
Who brought men tidings back from hell. No need,
Alas, no need! One walketh now about
Dissembling, in the name of prudence, greed,
And preaching in Christ’s name the craven doubt
Which turns men’s blood to water, and their eyes,
That else had seen the lighted path, puts out.
Ask you his name? The Spirit which Denies
God: for the helping of mankind by man
Is God. And when we stand at His Assize,
How shall we answer, we who led the van
Of Freedom—till the battle joined, and then
Skulked to the rear? The name American,
An inspiration once, is for brave men
Become a byword. When an innocent folk
Was herded late, like cattle to a pen,
To its slave-task, we paltered, but Spain spoke,
Spain, to whom we assigned the truckler’s rôle,
Unthrifty Spain, wrapped in her beggar’s cloak,
Hidalgo Spain, magnanimous of soul.
Peractum est: we are that which we are;
We’ve mixed our liquor, and must drain the bowl;
Unless—again some leader, like the Star,
Light us the way to Bethlehem and Christ,—
Not the pale wraith that sick souls, cloistered far
From mortals, made in their own image Christ,
But the stern spirit that shamed the Pharisee,
Drove out the money-changers, even that Christ
Who, braving Cæsar, suffered to set free
The enslaved of earth, who sent, he said, the sword.
If, consecrate to the high ministry,
There spoke a prophet worthy of that Lord,
We yet might hear and follow, yea, forsake
Idols of silver and gold with which we whored.
Friends, we who hope, can we the while not make
The way a little clearer he must go,
Some minim of his task not undertake?
Whether towards victory or overthrow,
Whether in shame or glory lies our fate,
I know not. But this much I surely know:
They do not serve who only stand and wait.