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Last
Songs from Vagabondia
by
Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
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PEACE
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THERE
is peace, you say. I believe you.
Peace? Ay, we know it well—
Not the peace of the smile of God, but the peace
of the leer of Hell,
Peace, that the rich may fatten and barter their souls
for gain,
Peace, that the hungry may slay and rob the corpse
of the slain, |
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Peace,
that the heart of the people may rot with a vile
gangrene.
What though the men are bloodless! What’s
a man to a machine?
Here you come with your Economics. If ever the
Devil designed
A science, 't was yours, I doubt not, a study
to Hell’s own mind,
Merciless, soulless, sordid, the science of selfish
greed,
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Blind
to the light of wisdom, and deaf to the voice of
need.
And you prate of the wealth of nations, as if it
were bought and sold!
The wealth of nations is men, not silk and cotton
and gold.
How will you measure in money the cost of knowledge
and Art?
Is honour valued in bank-notes? Can you pay for
a broken heart?
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Can
you reckon the worth of a poem by a standard of
meat and drink?
Can you buy with gold and silver a heart too great
to shrink?
Tell me, how many dollars will pay for the life-blood
shed
From the veins of the true and valiant who feared
not and are dead?
Battle is fearful—I grant it. The fields
are burnt bare with its breath,
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Death
and the wrongs of women that cry out louder than
death,
The grime and the trampled faces and the shrieking
of shells in the air,
White lips of victims that pray and there comes
no help for their prayer,
And Famine that follows the armies, and Crime that
skulks in their rear,—
These are fearful alike to the soldiers that strike
and the cravens that fear. |
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But there’s yet one woe far worse than war
with its griefs and graves—
To sink to a nation of cowards, sycophants, thieves
and slaves,
There is one thing for man or nation more within
man’s control
And worse than the death of the body, and that is
the death of the soul.
But the sins of the city are silent and her ruin is
wrought by stealth |
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the sores that fester are cloaked and her rottenness
masks as health.
True Peace is a holy thing—the peace God
gives to his own,
Heart’s peace, though the body move where
the thickest shot is thrown,
Deeps of peace forever unplumbed by a mortal eye—
But the peace of the world is the Devil’s,
a mockery and a lie,
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Better
city arrayed against city and hamlet with hamlet
at strife,
So valour outvalue lucre and honour be more than
life. |
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