Читать книгу Barbarians - Chambers Robert William - Страница 1

"Daughter of Light, the bestial wrath

Of Barbary besets thy path!

The Hun is beating his painted drum;

His war horns blare! The Hun is come!"

"Father, I feel his fœtid breath:

The thick air reeks with the stench of death;

My will is Thine. Thy will be done

On Turk and Bulgar, Czech and Hun!"

She understands.

Where the dead headland flare

Mocks sea and sand;

Where death-lights shed their glare

On No-Man's-Land.

France takes her stand.

Magnificently fair,

The Flaming Brand

Within her slender hand;

Christ's lilies in her hair.

"Daughter of Grief, thy House is sand!

Thy towers are falling athwart the land.

They've flayed the earth to its ribs of chalk

And over its bones the spectres stalk!"

"Father, I see my high spires reel;

My breast is scarred by the Hun's hoofed heel.

What was, shall be! I read Thy sign:

Thy ocean yawns for the smitten swine!"

Then, from Verdun

Pealed westward to the Somme

From every gun

God's summons: "Daughter! Come!"

Then the red sun

Stood still. Grew dumb

The universal hum

Of life, and numb

The lips of Life, undone

By Death.... And so—France won!

"Daughter of God, the End is here!

The swine rush on: the sea is near!

My wild flowers bloom on the trenches' edge;

My little birds sing by shore and sedge."

"Father, raise up my martyred land!

Clothe her bones with Thy magic hand;

Receive the Brand Thy angel lent,

And stanch my blood with Thy sacrament."