A SONG OF BATTLES

You will not do this thing again!

What thing?

Mistake of owning overmuch:

Great palaces and princely halls,

Gardens of Babylon that hang

High on a many-terraced hill,

Created at the cost of slaves

Dead by the thousands; that some queen

Might gaze in rapture of her lord.

Strange how the saddened centuries

Stood clothed in garments red with blood

Poured from the veins of innocents,

Their mothers glad to give them birth,

Their fathers driven forth to slay

And to be slain on battle fields!

Why?— Why?

Because a few men sold their souls

For little heaps of minted gold —

Round pieces stamped with Caesar's face

Or Alexander's awful brow —

Gold pieces whose possession gives

Command of battle ships and legions armed for enemies,

Raised up because of gold! gold! gold!

For when man gathers overmuch

God is exchanged for paltry dust;

And when God goes the devil comes

In panoply of armies:

Drums beating —

Trumpets blowing —

Flags fluttering — -

Men hating, fighting, bleeding, dying;

Women wailing and beating their breasts;

Cities in conflagration;

Tall towers tumbling to an accompaniment of thunder,

Tumbling down among the statues and the pictures,

Silencing the song of the singers,

Making the beautiful ugly,

Smothering in wide encompassing smoke

The children — the glad, the wonderful children —

God's lilies of laughter —

His immaculate ones!

I tell you gold is the cause of war,

That war is the price we pay for gold —

Gold for which we give God!