<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">The Red Country</h1><div class="stanza"><p class="line"><span class="smallcaps">In</span> the red country</p><p class="line">The sky flowers</p><p class="line">All day.</p><p class="line">Strange mechanical birds</p><p class="line">With struts of wire and glazed wings</p><p class="line">Cross the impassive sky</p><p class="line">Which burgeons ever and again</p><p class="line">With ephemeral unfolding flowers,</p><p class="line">White and yellow and brown,</p><p class="line">That spread and dissolve.</p><p class="line">And smaller rapid droning birds go by,</p><p class="line">And bright metallic bees whose sting is death.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Behind the hills,</p><p class="line">Behind the whispering woods whose leaves are falling</p><p class="line">Yellow and red to cover the red clay,</p><p class="line">Misshapen monsters squat with wide black maws</p><p class="line">Gulping smoke and belching flame.</p><p class="line">From the mirk reed beds of the age of coal,</p><p class="line">Wallowing out of their sleep in the earlier slime,</p><p class="line">They are resurrected and stagger forth to slay --</p><p class="line">The prehistoric Beasts we thought were dead.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">They are blinded with long sleep,</p><p class="line">But men with clever weapons</p><p class="line">Goad them to fresh pastures.</p><p class="line">Beside still waters</p><p class="line">They drink of blood and neigh a horrible laughter,</p><p class="line">And their ponderous tread shakes happy cities down,</p><p class="line">And the thresh of their flail-like tails</p><p class="line">Makes acres smoulder and smoke</p><p class="line">Blackened of golden harvest.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">The Beasts are back,</p><p class="line">And men, in their spreading shadow,</p><p class="line">Inhale the odor of their nauseous breath.</p><p class="line">Inebriate with it they fashion other gods</p><p class="line">Than the gods of day-dream.</p><p class="line">Of iron and steel are little images</p><p class="line">Made of the Beasts.</p><p class="line">And men rush forth and fling themselves for ritual</p><p class="line">Before these gods, before the lumbering Beasts, --</p><p class="line">And some make long obeisance.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Umber and violet flowers of the sky,</p><p class="line">The sun, like a blazing Mars, clanks across the blue</p><p class="line">And plucks you, to fashion into a nosegay</p><p class="line">To offer Venus, his old-time paramour.</p><p class="line">But now she shrinks</p><p class="line">And pales</p><p class="line">Like Cynthia, her more ascetic sister...</p><p class="line">Vulcan came to her arms in the grimy garb</p><p class="line">Of toil, he smelt of the forge and the racketing workshop,</p><p class="line">But not of blood.</p><p class="line">And, if she smells these flowers, they bubble ruby blood</p><p class="line">That trickles between her fingers.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Yet is a dream flowing over the red country,</p><p class="line">Yet is a light growing, for all the black furrows of the red country...</p><p class="line">The machines are foe or friend</p><p class="line">As the world desires.</p><p class="line">The Beasts shall sleep again.</p><p class="line">And in that sleep, when the land is twilight-still</p><p class="line">And men take thought among the frozen waves of the dead,</p><p class="line">The Sowers go forth once more,</p><p class="line">Sowers of vision, sowers of the seed</p><p class="line">Of peace or war.</p><p class="line">Shall it be peace indeed?</p><p class="line">Great shadowy figures moving from hill to hill</p><p class="line">Of tangled bodies, with rhythmic stride and cowled averted head,</p><p class="line">What do you sow with hands funereal --</p><p class="line">New savageries imperial,</p><p class="line">Unthinking pomps for arrogant, witless men?</p><p class="line">Or seed for the people in strong democracy?</p><p class="line">What do you see</p><p class="line">With your secret eyes, and sow for us, that we must reap again?</p></div><p class="byline">-- William Rose Benét.</p></body></html> · Great War