KEEP INNOCENCY

Like an old battle, youth is wild

With bugle and spear, and counter cry,

Fanfare and drummery, yet a child

Dreaming of that sweet chivalry,

The piercing terror cannot see.

He, with a mild and serious eye

Along the azure of the years,

Sees the sweet pomp sweep hurtling by;

But he sees not death's blood and tears,

Sees not the plunging of the spears.

And all the strident horror of

Horse and rider, in red defeat,

Is only music fine enough

To lull him into slumber sweet

In fields where ewe and lambkin bleat.

O, if with such simplicity

Himself take arms and suffer war;

With beams his targe shall gilded be,

Though in the thickening gloom be far

The steadfast light of any star!

Though hoarse War's eagle on him perch,

Quickened with guilty lightnings — there

It shall in vain for terror search,

Where a child's eyes beneath bloody hair

Gaze purely through the dingy air.

And when the wheeling rout is spent,

Though in the heaps of slain he lie;

Or lonely in his last content;

Quenchless shall burn in secrecy

The flame Death knows his victors by.