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Ella Wheeler Wilcox
death
And red with slaughter.
Yet God's purpose thrives
In all this holocaust of human lives.
I say God's purpose thrives. Just in the measure
That men have flung
away their lust for gain,
Stopped in their mad pursuit of worldly
pleasure,
And boldly faced unprecedented pain
And dangers,
without thinking of the cost,
So thrives God's purpose in the
holocaust.
Death is a little thing: all men must die;
But when ideals die, God
grieves in Heaven.
Therefore I think it was the reason why
This
Armageddon to the world was given.
The Soul of man, forgetful of
its birth,
Was losing sight of everything but earth.
Up from these many million graves shall spring,
A shining harvest
for the coming race.
An Army of Invisibles shall bring
A glorified
lost faith back to its place.
And men shall know there is a higher goal


Than earthly triumphs for the human soul.
They are not dead--they are not dead, I say,
These men whose mortal
forms are in the sod.
A grand Advance-Guard marching on its way,

Their Souls move upwards to salute their God!
While to their
comrades who are in the strife
They cry, 'Fight on! Death is the dawn
of life.'
We had forgotten all the depth and beauty
And lofty purport of that
old true word
Deplaced by pleasure--that old good word DUTY.

Now by its meaning is the whole world stirred.
These men died for it;
for it, now, we give,
And sacrifice, and serve, and toil, and live.

From out our hearts had gone a high devotion
For anything. It took a
mighty wrath -
Against great evil to wake strong emotion,
And put
us back upon the righteous path.
It took a mingled stream of tears and
blood
To cut the channel through to Brotherhood.
That word meant nothing on our lips in peace:
We had despoiled it by
our castes and classes.
But when this savage carnage finds surcease

A new ideal will unite the masses.
And there shall be True
Brotherhood with men -
The Christly Spirit stirring earth again.
For this our men have suffered, fought, and died.
And we who can
but dimly see the end
Are guarded by their spirits glorified,
Who
help us on our way, while they ascend.
They are not dead--they are
not dead, I say,
These men whose graves we decorate to-day.
America and France walk hand in hand;
As one, their hearts beat
through the coming years:
One is the aim and purpose of each land,

Baptized with holy water of their tears.
To-day they worship with one
faith, and know
Grief's first Communion in God's House of Woe.
Great Liberty, the Goddess at our gates,
And great Jeanne d'Arc, are
fused into one soul:
A host of Angels on that soul awaits
To lead it

up to triumph at the goal.
Along the path of Victory they tread,

Moves the majestic cortege of our dead.
Flowers of France in the Spring,
Your growth is a beautiful thing;

But give us your fragrance and bloom -
Yea, give us your lives in
truth,
Give us your sweetness and grace
To brighten the resting-place
Of
the flower of manhood and youth,
Gone into the dust of the tomb.
OUR ATLAS
Not Atlas, with his shoulders bent beneath the weighty world, Bore
such a burden as this man, on whom the Gods have hurled The evils of
old festering lands--yea, hurled them in their might And left him
standing all alone, to set the wrong things right.
It is the way the Fates have done since first Time's race began! They
open up Pandora's box before some chosen man;
And then, aloof,
they wait and watch, to see if he will find And wake the slumbering
God that dwells in every mortal's mind.
Erect, our modern Atlas stands, with brave uplifted head,
And there is
courage in his eyes, if in his heart be dread. Not dread of foes, but
dread of friends, who may not pull together, To bring the lurching ship
of State safe through the stormy weather.
Oh, never were there wilder waves or more stupendous seas,
Or
rougher rocks or bleaker winds, or darker days than these. Not
Washington, not Lincoln knew so grave an hour of Time
As he who
now stands face to face with War's world-shaking crime.
His brain is clear, his soul is brave, his heart is just and right, He asks
no honours of the earth, but favour in God's sight; His aim is not to
wear a crown or win imperial power,
But to use wisely for the race
life's terrible great hour.

O Liberty, who lights the world with rays that come from God, Shine
on Columbia's troubled track, and make it bright and broad; Shine on
each heart, and give it strength to meet its pains and losses,
And give
supernal strength to one who bears the whole world's crosses;
Take
from his thought the fear of friends who may not pull together, And
bring the glorious ship of State safe through wild waves and weather.
CAMP FOLLOWERS
In the old wars of the world there were camp followers,
Women of
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