A number of
Hamiltonians reacted to the horror of the opening weeks of World War One by
writing poetry.
One of those poets
was a woman named Constance Ward Harper. Two of her poems follow :
Heroic
Belgium
Flung into hell of
butchery and flames
By a dishonorable and
ruthless foe
The world’s pity poor
Belgium justly claims;
She is reaping a
harvest she did not sow.
Her only fault was
that her country lay
Across the path of
vandals, on plunder bent;
She would not let
them pass, and so today,
The mailed fist her
lovely land has scarred and rent.
Fields are ravished,
cities in ashes lie,
The beauty of Louvain
and Maitnes is naught
But empty shells,
where spirits moan and sigh,
As they seek for
those they lost, but find them not.
There ghosts of her
slain children walk o’nights
And cry for vengeance
upon the modern Hun,
Who’s strewn their
peaceful land with awful sights,
That make cold shivers through humanity run.
Still the winepress
is running Belgian blood –
Still the sky with
burning Belgians homes is red:
But Belgium’s spirit
rides the crimson flood,
Undaunted amid her
ruins and her dead.
Who such a spirit as
hers can conquer,
Which never so great
as today, when she stands
Guarding national
freedom and honor,
Holding liberty’s
torch in her wounded hands?
Above the din of war
she sounds a note
That will echo along
the vistas of time-
Most glorious chapter
ever she wrote,
History’ll record to her
courage sublime.
What shall she write
thee, German oppressor,
Thou who smote those
whom honor prompted to save?
Blots o’er thy escutcheon
history will scatter –
Blots all the waters
of Lethe cannot tave.
-Hamilton, October
26, 1914 1
1 “Heroic
Belgium”
Hamilton Spectator.
October 31, 1914.
Peace
and War
With saddened brow
and drooping wings,
Fair Peace stood brooding o’er the world;
Ne’er had her eyes
beheld such things –
As now before her lay unfurled.
Was this a farce of
Hell on earth ?
Scarce real the cataclysm seemed.
Had fantasy given
birth
To imagery heroic undreamed?
Else, God’s fiat –
Let us make man !
Had changed to – Let war man unmake.
For ne’er, since that
creative dawn,
Did Death such heavy payment take.
Or – awful thought,
it blanched her face ! –
Was God no longer in His heaven –
Was there a demon in
His place,
Who unto carnage earth had given?
Great shells flew
hurtling through the air,
Exploding with murderous bang;
And mingling with the
trumpet’s blare,
Wild laughter from Olympus rang.
Dead men and horses,
thousands lay
In heaps upon the blood-soaked earth:
While wounded, mad
with agony,
Were supplicating God for death.
And still, and still,
fresh troops came on
Across the shambles to attack,
And fought, as did
the Goth, and Hun,
Till thousands more bestrewed their track.
No time was there to
bury dead;
Foul pestilential stench arose,
That sickened, more
than steel or lead,
The masses of opposing foes.
These are the nation’s
choicest sons –
None there of weak, degenerate sires;
The drain for war
comes not from slums;
Those, left behind, breed in their mires.
While strong and fit
go ever out –
Yesterday, today, tomorrow;
Till virile manhood’s
seed dies out;
And chivalry droops in sorrow.
Thus, from the
weaklings of the race,
Must future generations come;
Great God, have pity
on their case
By miracle avert their doom!
Night dropped her
mantle, but in vain.
To hide the carnage of the day.
The burning city of
Louvain,
Lit up the sky with lurid ray.
And now new horrors
came in view,
Unnoticed midst the battle roar –
The homeless ones
passed in review;
Hungry, and maimed, by cursed war.
Peace turned her
streaming eyes on high,
“How long, oh Lord ! will slaughter reign –
How long, ‘neath iron
heels, shall lie
Thy patient poor in direst pain?
An angel, with
flaming sword,
Appeared against the western sky,
“I bring a message
from our Lord –
This war’s the last – thy day is high.
-
Hamilton Oct. 8, 1914 2
2 “Peace and
War”
Hamilton
Spectator. November 7, 1914
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