FAR road for words that rush,

It seemed no spring could mend her,No tardy sunshine renderAtonement for such wrong.Snow after snow, and gale and hail,Gaunt trees encased in icy mail,The glittering drifts so hardThey took no traceOf scared, wild feet,No print of fox and hareDriven by dearthTo forage for their meatEven in dooryard bareAnd frosty lawnUnder the peril of the human…

Fed on earth’s glorious youth, high hearts all passionate to cope—O Chivalry of Hope!—With the cloudy host of the infidel and the Holy Earth reclaim.For each dear land is Holy Land to her own fervent sonsWho fling in loyal sacrifice their lives before the guns,But when they meet their foes above the battlesmoke, they laugh,And…

Of a bursting shellThat strewed red flesh on the air.Far away over sea and land:The knitting droptFrom an old white hand,And a heart for an instant stopt.But it was Death, dark mother and wise,All-tenderest,Who kissed his eyesAnd gathered him to her breast.

A figure of strange passion,A winged and sworded form.Majestic, wild, colossal,With angry arm thrown high;Those swaying shoulders jostleThe glory from the sky.Then flows the happy hour.That tyrant of the mistTurns to a wavering towerAnd melts in amethyst,Foretelling thus the cycle— O speed it, Holy Dove!—When the Archangel MichaelShall vanish into Love.

To make a big, beautiful stockingFor Santa, her merriest son;And now in some wonderful wayShe has hung it, by twist and by twirl,On the tip of the moon, and sits rocking,Old mother, her day’s work done.How long and how empty it flaps,Like a new, white cloud in the sky!The stars gleam above it for candles;But…

Torture-scarred and dungeon-crazed,Down the convict road they pour,More and more and myriads more,Terrible as ghosts.Shuffling feet that miss the chain,Shoulders welted, faces hoar,Sightless eyes that stare in vain,Writhen limbs and idiot tongue—They are old who were so youngWhen they passed before.Grimy from the mines, a stainAnd a horror on the whiteSweep of the Siberian plain,These,…