<html xmlns:tei="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"><body><h1 align="center" class="head">Vision of War</h1><div class="stanza"><p class="subhead">1.</p><p class="line">I <span class="smallcaps">went</span> out into the night of quiet stars;</p><p class="line">I looked up at the wheeling heavens, at the mysterious firmament;</p><p class="line">I thought of the awful distances out there, of the incredible magnitudes, of space and silence and eternity;</p><p class="line">I thought of man, his life, his love, his dream;</p><p class="line">I thought of his body, how it is born and grows, and of his spirit that cannot be explained.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">All about me slept the land in peace, and nature slept in deep serenity;</p><p class="line">An off-shore wind had died at sunset, the bay was calm and golden as twilight fell;</p><p class="line">Not a cloud broke the clear and tender blue of the evening sky.</p><p class="line">Then the quiet stars came out, the air grew cool with the breath of night;</p><p class="line">A land-breeze flurried, wafting the odor of damp woods and late hay-fields;</p><p class="line">A gentle breeze, that scarcely turned the sleeping leaves.</p><p class="line">I walked on through the village, I saw the lights go out in houses as men and women prepared for bed;</p><p class="line">Safe and secure, the homes of my neighbors rested in the shadow of tall trees, that had been growing there peacefully a long time;</p><p class="line">I passed on into the country, crickets were singing in the fields, fireflies were glimmering in the pastures among low growths of spruce and pine;</p><p class="line">I mounted a hill, high overhead brooded the majestic and silent heavens;</p><p class="line">On the eastern horizon a great bright star arose, casting a track across the bay.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">I have never seen the world so calm, the air so clear and still;</p><p class="line">I have never known an hour so full of quietness.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="subhead">2.</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Hour of the War!</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Now, now -- and here -- on this same earth, and under this same sky!</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Now! -- Now! -- The War! -- The War! -- The War!</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Night, and a sodden field, and starlight over all,</p><p class="line">And on the ground the bodies of dead men lying;</p><p class="line">Tumbled, broken, grotesque, in attitudes unhuman, in lumpish, swollen heaps, they lie,</p><p class="line">Where death suddenly snatched them up and flung them down.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">A strange, dark, silent scene;</p><p class="line">Here passed the awful charge three days ago;</p><p class="line">Here met the choking volley, shattered out and fell.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Three days and nights they have been lying here;</p><p class="line">No help could reach them, cast between the battle lines;</p><p class="line">No help is needed now.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Slowly above their heads the conflict wore itself away;</p><p class="line">Calm settled on the shaking, riven air;</p><p class="line">The sharp cries of the wounded stopped one by one, their groans grew fainter;</p><p class="line">A few crawled off -- the others lay as they had fallen, under the sun and stars;</p><p class="line">Then the third night, and peace at last, the quietness restored.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="subhead">3.</p><p class="line">Listen! -- could one be living? -- come this way;</p><p class="line">Here where a score of bodies are drawn mysteriously together,</p><p class="line">A turning face catches a gleam of starlight,</p><p class="line">A hand moves, winnowing the air.</p><p class="line"><em>"Water!"</em> -- No use, no use -- too late;</p><p class="line">His breast is shot away -- don't move him -- God, how he bled!</p><p class="line">What is it, comrade? A letter -- make a light:</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">"We have not heard since you left home.... I cannot bear it...."</p><p class="line">Turn the sheet over: -- <em>"Oh, my dear, be careful!"</em></p><p class="line">Here is the signature -- the address -- a distant village;</p><p class="line">I have been there -- an ancient, quiet village of the north,</p><p class="line">Fronting the open sea.</p><p class="line">Yes, comrade, I will write -- he smiles:</p><p class="line">To lie here, thinking, suffering, remembering;</p><p class="line">To be left to die alone!</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="subhead">4.</p><p class="line">But not alone:</p><p class="line">Passing brother, you have yet a grim companion;</p><p class="line">Along the edge of the thicket just now, as I went to the brook down there for water,</p><p class="line">I stumbled over something that must have been left from the charge a week ago:</p><p class="line">A body that held the remnants of a man.</p><p class="line">He had dragged himself to the brook, he lay imbedded in tall waving grass;</p><p class="line">His stomach had been ripped open by shrapnel, maggots were heaving in the wound</p><p class="line">(Did you know that a man could live while maggots formed in his flesh?)</p><p class="line">His muscles twitched convulsively, he was barely conscious;</p><p class="line">He did not notice the match I struck, his eyes were filmed over, he would not drink;</p><p class="line">The region that he inhabited was an unknown, unimaginable land.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">(At home, a woman waits for news of him:</p><p class="line">It is well that she can never hear.)</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="subhead">5.</p><p class="line">Pass on, pass on! Behold the mobilization of armies;</p><p class="line">The men leaving their work at the counter and factory, dropping the plow where it stands in the field,</p><p class="line">Flocking together, filling the towns, saying good-by to wife and children, taking a last look around;</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">(Our country calls! Our country, and our King!)</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Behold the flinging forward of nations in the wake of armies;</p><p class="line">The marvellous, massive engines, the enormous paraphernalia;</p><p class="line">The powerful mechanical conveyances, the long lines of them carrying supplies;</p><p class="line">The immense stores of provisions at the depot, the stacks of clothing and other necessities, the huge piles of fodder and grain for the horses;</p><p class="line">The flaring illuminations, the sweating gangs working beneath them, ceaselessly receiving, sorting, distributing;</p><p class="line">The field guns, the heavy artillery, their ponderous steady movements through the villages;</p><p class="line">The stout-wheeled wagons full of dangerous, costly ammunition;</p><p class="line">The roaring trains, arriving and departing, some laden with supplies, some packed with humanity, alive or dead;</p><p class="line">The vast and systematic commissariat, the grist of war.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="subhead">6.</p><p class="line">Behold the columns, advancing, advancing, advancing;</p><p class="line">Tramping steadily onward, seen behind on the hills, and seen ahead to the distant turn of the road;</p><p class="line">Streaming along the valleys, gaining and crossing the passes, flanking the mountain ranges, netting the land with a lethal web;</p><p class="line">Accoutrements flashing and jangling, thunder of tread, regular motion swaying and undulating the lines;</p><p class="line">Countless miles of indomitable marching men;</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">(Our country calls! Our country, and our King!)</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Behold the front, the million-manned intrenchments, continent-spanning;</p><p class="line">The infinite detail of day-works and night-works;</p><p class="line">The burrowing, roofing, screening, the placing of barbed-wire entanglements;</p><p class="line">The stealthy advance in the darkness, the hasty and desperate digging-in under fire;</p><p class="line">The shifting and rushing forward of artillery, the lashing of horses, the running of wires for communication;</p><p class="line">The searchlights feeling afar through the night, like cold white fingers;</p><p class="line">The life of the trenches, after all is completed;</p><p class="line">The hidden underground chambers, the well-concealed passages, the bomb-proof quarters;</p><p class="line">The men laughing and singing, some of them making music on simple instruments, some playing cards, some smoking and talking;</p><p class="line">Passing backwards and forwards, eating, sleeping, fighting, or taking their leisure, all out of sight, in tunnels and cavities below the surface:</p><p class="line">A serious new game for earnest, grown-up children.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">(Hark, hark! Aloft -- look up;</p><p class="line">A great bird sails across the sky, with loud and strident whirr of wings;</p><p class="line">Terribly swift -- a moment -- it is gone.</p><p class="line">Can men be passing there on high, so swiftly through the air?)</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="subhead">7.</p><p class="line">Pass on! Behold the charge;</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">(Ready! Run low! Run wide!</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Our country calls! Our country, and our King!)</p><p class="line">Over the open fields, trampling the crops, dropping to fire, rising to run;</p><p class="line">(Some never rising, never again to rise;)</p><p class="line">Straggling, thinning, wavering, (God, it is hopeless! -- it is too much!)</p><p class="line">Onward, onward pressing, rushing and driving onward;</p><p class="line">(I did not know that men could be so reckless and brave!)</p><p class="line">Mounting the opposite slope, cutting their way through entanglements;</p><p class="line">Gaining the outer trenches, (deadly work for the bayonets!)</p><p class="line">Shouting, cursing, groaning, stabbing, wrestling, clubbing with butts, fighting at last with bare fists;</p><p class="line">Annihilating the enemy, capturing the position!</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">(Victory! Victory! Victory!</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Our country calls! Our country, and our King!)</p><p class="line">(On the open field lie many huddled shapes;</p><p class="line">The wounded are stirring feebly out there, like men awaking from a violent dream;</p><p class="line">They lift their heads, they stretch their arms, they struggle to rise on their elbows;</p><p class="line">They sit up, staring around -- they crawl like snails among the crops;</p><p class="line">A screaming horse dashes athwart the line, dragging his entrails on the ground.)</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="subhead">8.</p><p class="line">Behold the ships at sea;</p><p class="line">A long and weary time they had been waiting, constantly on the alert, nerves strained to breaking;</p><p class="line">In smothering, foggy weather, in gloomy days, in pitch-black nights, in wild and desperate gales;</p><p class="line">Anxious for battle, longing to sight the enemy, every one on the lookout, chafing and growling;</p><p class="line">Anything, anything, boys, to end this tedious monotony!</p><p class="line">(Maybe an unseen deliverer is at hand.)</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">The captain was walking the bridge that morning, the crew were at breakfast, the navigating officer was winding his chronometers;</p><p class="line">Suddenly, from forward, a frantic cry! A man runs aft, pointing to windward;</p><p class="line">The captain whips out his glasses, scans the horizon;</p><p class="line">For a while, he does not pick up a little white streak on the water, not very far away, drawing rapidly nearer;</p><p class="line">A streak like the wake of a shark's fin, cutting along on the weather bow.</p><p class="line">He sees it! Quick, to the signal! <em>Stop! Full speed astern!</em></p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Over, there, with the helm!</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">Too late, too late, captain of ship and lives;</p><p class="line">Away from the little wake springs a broader wake;</p><p class="line">A murderous fish drives straight towards you, churning the water as he goes.</p><p class="line"><em>Close compartment doors!</em> -- the last command;</p><p class="line">Then to the end of the bridge, and stand there waiting;</p><p class="line">Press tight the lips, fold the arms on the breast, throw back the head:</p><p class="line">Below, along the weather rail, a line of men stands silently, watching death come;</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">(Our country calls! Our country, and our King!)</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">A whitish object skims on the surface of the blue sea;</p><p class="line">The torpedo strikes below the magazine;</p><p class="line">The ship is instantly blown in two -- she sinks like lead;</p><p class="line">A faint cheer finds no listener but God.</p><p class="line">A few men struggle on the water, where she went down;</p><p class="line">They cling for a while to fragments of wreckage;</p><p class="line">There is no help in sight -- they cannot be saved.</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="line">(Down in the close, tight shell -- in the unseen, mysterious vessel,</p><p class="line">Crouching in a dim chamber, in utter silence, wrapped in impenetrable privacy, apart from life, cut off from world of land and sea,</p><p class="line">A man sits, breathing hard, clenching his hands;</p><p class="line">Far above him, where sunlight strikes on breaking wave, a secret eye looks out,</p><p class="line">A secret mirror throws down to him the story there;</p><p class="line">One long, intense, absorbing glance -- then to the signal stretches out his hand;</p><p class="line">Turning away, as darkly as she came, the submarine speeds homeward,</p><p class="line">Leaving the sea to seal her work and bury her dead.)</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="subhead">9.</p><p class="line">Behold! Hour of the War!</p><p class="line">Life everywhere flowing in strange new channels!</p><p class="line">The world aroused, awakened! The silence rent! Peace shattered and overthrown!</p><p class="line">The well-ordered conventions rudely broken up! The illusions dissipated! The motives suddenly disclosed!</p><p class="line">Men face to face with nature, death, and pain! The elemental shown! And dim and far, the truth appearing!</p><p class="line">The hovering dream I The distant and divine conception!</p><p class="line">(I sing no battles lost, retreating armies:</p><p class="line">O, I tell you, in this campaign there are no defeats!</p><p class="line">O, I tell you, the retreating and advancing armies are equally triumphant!</p><p class="line">O, I tell you, the lost battles contribute as much as the battles won, to the sure result of this campaign!</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Victory! Victory! Victory!</p><p class="line" style="text-indent:%">Our country calls! Our country, and our King!)</p></div><div class="stanza"><p class="subhead">10.</p><p class="line">While about me sleeps the land in peace, while men and women prepare for bed;</p><p class="line">While the land-breeze flurries, wafting a scent of autumn woods and fallen leaves;</p><p class="line">While the crickets sing in the fields, and fireflies glimmer among low spruce and pine;</p><p class="line">While the bright star rises, casting a track across the bay;</p><p class="line">While the majestic heavens wheel onward, overlooking space and time;</p><p class="line">While the still air drops down its quietness like love.</p></div><p class="byline">-- Lincoln Colcord.</p></body></html> · Great War