O preacher, prophet, martyr, sage,
Whose message falls on heedless ears,
Bethink that unrepentant age
When Noah preached for six score years;
See Israel to Baal bowed,
The persecuting Pharisee,
And all the loaves and fishes crowd
Beside the sea of Galilee.
O patriot of humble birth,
With heart to help a fellow man,
To reconstruct the things of earth
Upon a nobler, wiser plan;
The curse that mars the lowly born
Will dog your footsteps till your death,
The proud Judeans' words of scorn,
"No good thing comes from Nazareth."
O mother, when your son lies dead,
You hate this cruel world of blood,
You pay the price, with grief bowed head,
The age-old price of motherhood.
'Twas thus Eve mourned o'er Abel's loss,
Naomi grieved in tents of Shem,
'Twas thus she wept beside the cross
Who bore a son in Bethlehem.
O soldier with the shattered breast,
Beside the shell-swept Flanders road,
The One who gives the weary rest
Knows all the burden of your load.
The anguished thirst, the bitter pain,
A Father's face He could not see,
The hate of man, sin's awful stain,
He bore them all on Calvary.
EGO
The ego of the human race,
The sordid love of self,
We see it in life's hurried chase,
The grafter's greed for pelf.
The horror of the battle field,
The killed, the maimed, the blind,
The beaten foe, too proud to yield,
The ego of mankind.
The ego of the human race,
The poison in our blood,
The lying tongue, the double face,
Justice and Truth withstood.
The heavy task, the scanty pay,
The beggar with his bone,
The rich young man who went away,
The king upon his throne.
The ego of the human race,
The subtle serpent's lie
No toilsome years can e'er efface,
"Ye shall not surely die."
Eve still by serpent's word beguiled,
The curse on Ham that fell,
Poor outcast Hagar's starving child,
Cities where Lot might dwell.
The ego of the human race,
The toil each day brings in,
The idlers in the market place,
The sorrow and the sin;
Bequeathed from pre-historic sire,
In Turk and Teuton still,
The ape's inordinate desire,
The tiger's lust to kill.
FREEDOM
We're fighting now for liberty
Where'er our armies are,
We wouldn't want our king to be
A Kaiser, or a Czar.
We want no rabbi with his book,
No priest in sable stole,
For priest and rabbi ne'er can brook
The freedom of the soul.
We must be free, to work, or play,
Or loaf, just when we like,
And if we get too little pay,
Be free to go on strike:
And if, perchance, we gain our goal,
And wealth to us should come,
We must be free to take our toll,
From workman's scanty crumb.
We must be free to hit the booze
That steals our children's bread,
The cash that ought to buy them shoes,
Pour down our necks instead.
We must be free to come and go;
No Russ nor Hun are we,
There's nothing grander here below
Than British liberty.
But when, from nations drowned in tears,
For crimes by Kaiser done,
The cry goes forth for volunteers
To come and fight the Hun;
We must be free at home to stay,
While others take their chance
"Of finding little homes of clay"
In Flanders or in France.
TWENTY YEARS AFTER
November, 1917
Where men make bloody sacrifice,
And pile the earth with slain,
Kind Mother Nature ever tries
To cover up the stain.
'Mid charnel of the tiger's den
May pure white lilies blow,
And on the graves of warlike men
The peaceful daisies grow.
The grass is all the greener now
Where men most fiercely strove,
And maids may hear on Vimy's brow
The cooing of the dove.
Where cannon roared by night and day,
And men in thousands fell,
The sunny headed children play,
And pick up bits of shell.
Where once raged war's infernal din,
And bullets fell like rain
The peaceful peasants gather in
A hundred fold of grain;
And where men plied the deadly steel,
And blood ran red like wine,
We see the holy sisters kneel
Beside the rebuilt shrine.
And over on the rising ground
The fresh young maples stand
To mark the graves of those who found
Death in a foreign land;
Here women of the nameless woes,
Still pray when day is done,
That God will rest the souls of those
Who strafed the hellish Hun.
FAITH
November, 1917
The soldier, when the war began,
Presumed the cause was right,
But didn't ask the campaign's plan;
His duty was to fight.
The child, with all things yet to prove,
Still thinks the world is fair,
While trusting in a mother's love,
And in a father's care.
The patient 'neath the surgeon's knife
Unconscious is, and still,
The only hope to save his life
Is in the doctor's skill.
The farmer sows in faith his seed,
And trusts the sun and rain,
Meanwhile he fights the choking weed
That grows among the grain.
The planets in their orbits roll,
The seasons come and go,
The angry seas own God's control,
His care the sparrows know.
But we, by pride made over bold,
Face Providence unawed,
And like the patriarch of old,
Presume to question God.
Ten thousand prayers in discord rise
From church and cloister dim,
When will we cease our feeble cries,
And trust the world to Him?
'Tis His the broken heart to bind,
To heal the serpent's bite,
The judge is He of all mankind,
And shall He not do right?
EVERYBODY HELPING
March, 1917
If you want a fine new car,
Do without,
If you like a good cigar,
Cut it out,
Thrift will help to win the war,
There's no doubt.
If you are too old to fight,
You can pay,
If you think war isn't right,
You can pray,
Help to crush the Kaiser's might
As you may.
If you are a Tory gay,
Or a Grit,
Throw your politics away,
Do your bit,
War is now the game to play;
You are it.
If you have good things to eat,
Pack a box,
If you are a maiden neat,
Knit some socks,
Keep the soldier's tired feet,
Off the rocks.
Get a piece of land on spec,
Plow and sow,
There's a place for every peck,
You can grow.
Swat the Kaiser in the neck,
Issue him a passage check
Down below.
THE WORLD'S OVERDRAFT
May, 1917
On life's broad fields, whate'er we sow,
'Tis certain we shall reap;
The watching scribes, above, below,
Somewhere a record keep.
The faithless church, the lying creed
Teaching that wrong is right,
The childless home, the heartless greed,
The jealousy and spite.
The feasting, selfish, idle rich,
The hungry, hardened poor,
The drunkard lying in the ditch,
The brothel's open door;
Whate'er we do, where'er we dwell,
Whate'er our names or creeds,
They total up in heaven or hell,
The sum of all our deeds.
We thought the race was to the swift,
The battle to the strong,
Like mariners with boat adrift,
We heard the sirens' song,
We put our trust in armies vast,
In battleships and marts,
We deemed but hoodoos of the past
The prayers from human hearts.
So heavy grew the moral debt
Of every class and rank,
No further credit could we get
At Satan's private bank.
The wealth bestowed by sea and land
We squandered in a day,
The devil took our notes of hand,
And now there's hell to pay.
The world will drown in blood and tears,
And famine stalk abroad,
'Til men repent their sordid years
And humbly call on God.
This cruel war the Kaiser made,
(The worst since Satan fell,)
Will end when all the world has paid
Its overdraft on hell.
SLACKERS
We condemn, as selfish slackers,
Those not willing to enlist
To oppose the Prussian Kultur
And the Kaiser's iron fist,
But they're not the only slackers,
Those who will not go and fight.
For every man's a slacker
Who does less now than he might.
There are slackers in the pulpit,
In the elder's cushioned pew,
And all through the congregation
There are slackers not a few.
There are slackers in the workshop,
There are slackers on the farm,
And slackers down in Parliament
Whose defeat would do no harm.
Some munition men are slackers,
And some who store our food.
While they dream of higher profits
And of interest accrued.
We condemn the youthful shirker
And we say his heart's not right,
But there's many an arrant slacker
Not eligible to fight.
So let each and all get busy,
If we would the Kaiser thrash.
From the man who owns the millions
To the girl who slings the hash,
All the women busy knitting,
All the men out hoeing beans,
For the war may be decided
By the work behind the scenes.
THE LOYAL BLACKS
August, 1917
Three years ago the war began,
Three years ago to-day
The Empire's call to every man
Was either fight or pay.
Some men the country well could spare
Their clear-cut duty shun
But all the Blacks have done their share
To help defeat the Hun.
My brother Jim, who worked by spells
(He had a lazy streak)
Is busy now inspecting shells
At forty bones a week.
And Jack, of course, is rather young,
He's just nineteen or so,
And Tom had trouble with his lung
About twelve years ago.
My brother Ben would like to fight,
The Kaiser makes him wild,
But if he went 'twould not be right,
He has a wife and child.
I cannot lease my farm and store,
With prices soaring higher,
If times keep good for two years more
I think I can retire.
Although we didn't volunteer
And learn the soldier's art,
We hold some good positions here
And bravely do our part,
While some the khaki suits have donned,
And in the trenches slave
We put into a war loan bond
Each dollar we can save.
But there are lots of husky chaps
Could go as well as not,
There's Arthur Mee and Joe perhaps,
Paul Pierce and Barney Bott,
And Peter Jones and Sam Delong,
And Jack Smith's hired man,
And Scotty Moss, and Wesley Strong,
And Billy Barlow's Dan.
And Robert Green and Walter White,
And others I could name;
When these refuse to go and fight
It is a burning shame;
I think they should be forced to go,
Conscription is the plan
To catch these chaps so very slow
And make them play the man.
THE TROUBLES OF TINO
War pot is still stewing,
Not a sign of peace,
Trouble now is brewing
'Round the shores of Greece;
Tino needs our pity,
Threatened by the Huns,
Seaboard town and city
Faced by British guns.
If he helps the Germans
Lose his job for life;
If he favors Britain
Has to square his wife.
Holds no trumps nor aces,
Cannot take a trick,
Cards are all queen's faces,
Tino's feeling sick.
Tino never whistles,
Neither does he sing,
Bed of thorns and thistles;
Who would be a king?
HAS THE WORLD GONE MAD?
December, 1916
What a lack of reason
In this earthly throng!
In and out of season
Everything goes wrong;
Over there in Europe
Kaiser, king and czar,
Raise a mighty flare up,
Plunge a world in war.
Neither king nor kaiser
Down in Mexico,
Are the people wiser?
Echo answers, "No!"
There, contending factions
Murder, pillage, burn;
Plunder and exactions
Everywhere you turn.
Has the world gone crazy?
Are the men all fools?
Is our thinking hazy,
Spite of all our schools?
THE TREES
The wind that through the forest blows
May scatter leaves and blossoms wide.
The parent tree but firmer grows
When by the tempest torn and tried.
The stately oak withstands the storm
That rocks its boughs in fiercest strife;
The winds that shake its sturdy form
But give a deeper, stronger life.
The maple leaves are falling fast,
The sugar groves look gaunt and grim,
But sap will flow when winter's past,
And sweetness course through every limb.
The mighty eucalyptus tree
But sheds its bark at winter's call
Its leaves retain their greenery,
And yield a curing oil for all.
A seedling in the Maori's time,
Now, toughened by a thousand gales,
Straight stands the kauri in its prime,
Fit mast for proudest ship that sails.
Drooping its weary fronds, the palm
In sorrow stands on sun-baked plain
Till comes, like blessed healing balm,
The early and the latter rain.
The noble banyan dying lives,
In youth 'twould shield a single man,
In age its spreading shelter gives
Shade for a prince's caravan.
No weaklings these, their roots deep down
In Mother Earth retain their hold.
To heaven they raise a leafy crown,
Sound-hearted, loyal, earnest-souled.
WHO KNOWS
The pessimist
Our lot is cast in evil days
We almost lose our faith in God,
We cannot comprehend His ways,
Nor recognize His chast'ning rod.
To stem the Hun's relentless tread,
His hymns of hate, his crimes of Cain
We give our daily toll of dead,
But wonder if 'tis all in vain.
The Optimist
Brave men must fight, brave men must fall,
Whene'er a tyrant lifts his head;
When Freedom sounds her battle call,
We must not grudge our noble dead.
E'en now the victor's shouts we hear,
On blood bought hill, o'er shell-swept plain;
The end of tyranny is near,
Our struggle has not been in vain.
The Socialist
If, when our cheering shall have died,
No more for sordid grain we plan,
But shed the hoofs and horns of pride,
And strive to help our fellow man,
So each will get a fair return
For labor done by hand or brain
And none can take what others earn;
The war will not have been in vain.
The Anarchist
If still the selfish creed we preach
Of pleasure, ease and strife for gold;
Employer, and employee, each
Resentful, greedy, uncontrolled;
Then poor men still will curse the great,
And hellish hordes will rise again
With hungry, hardened, Hunnish hate;
This war will have been fought in vain.
AFTERWARDS
When the war shall have ceased with its sorrow,
Its hunger, and horror, and hell,
In the dawn of a brighter to-morrow,
What tale will historians tell?
Will the nations get records of glory,
Of cowardice, courage or crime,
When the sages record the true story,
To ring down the decades of time?
We believe that some peoples now broken,
And crushed by the Turk and the Hun
Will arise from their darkness unspoken,
And stand in the light of the sun.
And it may be that Germans, grown wiser
And taught at so fearful a cost,
Will have hanged their contemptible Kaiser
And regained the fair name they have lost.
We believe that the allies now fighting,
And lavishing billions untold,
Will have found, in the wrong that needs righting,
A service far better than gold;
That in bearing the load of another,
In heeding the cry of the pained,
That in staying the feet of a brother,
Fresh strength for themselves will have gained.
And some lands that now cravenly study
The getting of guerdons and gain,
May have found their gold blasted and bloody,
And tarnished by tears for the slain;
And because they dishonoured their stations
Were weak when they should have been strong,
May be treated with scorn by the nations,
A byword and hissing among.
So the scribe will set down in his pages
The story the centuries tell,
That, for sin, death is still the true wages,
And broad the road leading to hell.
GERMAN SECURITIES FALL
The British guns have spoken
And Bill may lose his crown,
The German line is broken,
And saur-kraut is down.
The gallant French are storming
The Huns with iron hail;
They've given Fritz a warning,
And limburger is stale.
The Russ is westward pushing,
Herding the Huns like sheep,
Thus ends the big four flushing,
And liverwurst is cheap.
King Victor's brave Italians
Are driving back pell-mell
The Austrian battalions
And weiners will not sell.
The Belgians, too, are holding
Their end up with the rest,
They hear the Teutons scolding,
Bologna's past its best.
Roumanians, and others,
Who now are standing pat
Will call the allies brothers
When lager beer goes flat.
TROUBLE IN THE TRENCHES
The true story of the difficulty on the Russian front.
September, 1917
When Slav and Russ had raised a fuss,
And sent their Czar a-kiting,
Said Givinski to Blatherski,
"We've done enough of fighting."
"I've got a cough," wheezed Killmanoff,
"From working in the trenches,
I'd rather fight a doggoned sight,
Than put up with the stenches.
I want to quit and take a sit
In some place clean and brighter,
Let those who like come down the pike
To strafe the German blighter."
"I've got the itch," growled Dirtovitch,
"Bog spavin and lumbago."
"I'm never dry," swore Goshallski,
"I smell worse than a Dago."
"This cheese is high," grouched Buttinski,
"No hungry rat would eat it."
"This meat is tough," whined Ivanuff,
"I think we ought to beat it."
"It makes me mad," stormed Hazembad,
"The prevalence of vermin."
"You've said it right," owned Gotabite,
"I'm lousy as a German."
Said Takemoff, "Our lives are rough
In these here blooming ditches,
But mine's the worst by half a verst,
Since some guy stole my breeches."
Their pay was back, their belts were slack,
Each man his troubles blurted.
With empty guns to face the Huns,
Small wonder they deserted.
THE WORSHIPPERS
Wo Sing was just a heathen blind,
A dull insensate clod,
Yet somehow to his darkened mind,
There came a thought of God.
He shaped an idol out of clay,
And to it bowed his knee;
No one had taught him how to pray,
Alas, the poor Chinee!
An artist took his brush and paint,
And on his canvas board,
He wrought a picture of a saint,
And called it Christ the Lord;
With patient hand, and wondrous skill,
Retouched that kindly face,
But thought it ever lacking still,
In majesty and grace.
A preacher in his pulpit stood,
(His words the people trust,)
His message was that God is good,
And knows mankind is dust.
He drew a picture of a Lord,
Omniscient, pure and kind,
His thoughts, His purposes, His word,
Too high for human mind.
The Kaiser has conceived a god,
To rule o'er sea and land,
With strong, remorseless, iron rod,
In Hohenzollern hand;
A god who honors lies and fraud,
And mean hypocrisy,
A boastful, bloody, brutal god,
The god of Germany.
And thus we all our idols make,
As our conception is,
And pray our Father, but to take,
Our helpless hands in His;
To give us each a ray of hope,
To each a message bring,
Each king and kaiser, priest and pope,
Each humble poor Wo Sing.
TO JEAN BAPTISTE
O Jean Baptiste! do not resist
The military act, Jean;
You like to fight, the cause is right,
(You know this is a fact, Jean.)
When tasks are hard, 'tis not, old pard.
Your way to ever shirk, Jean;
The saw-log jam, mills, woods and dam
All tell how well you work, Jean.
It isn't fear that keeps you here,
You're active, brave and strong, Jean;
But in this scrap, by some mishap,
We got you going wrong, Jean.
In dear old France, the Huns advance
With bullet, bomb and gas, Jean,
It's hardly square that you're not there;
(Hank Bourassa's an ass, Jean.)
That we may win, you must begin
To help more in this fight, Jean,
The die is cast, forget our past
Intolerance and spite, Jean,
The things you love may worthless prove,
If you don't get your gun, Jean;
Your woods, and mines, your homes and shrines,
May all go to the Hun, Jean.
Our kinsmen brave, across the wave,
The Kaiser have defied, Jean,
British and French, in bloody trench,
Are fighting side by side, Jean.
Where duty leads, what matter creeds,
Or what baptismal font, Jean?
So let us sing—"Long live the king"
And join the bonne entente, Jean.
THE LOST TRIBES
We read about the tribes dispersed,
That Israelitish host,
Condemned and exiled, sin-accursed,
Among the Gentiles lost,
We wonder what strange paths they walk,
In what far land they dwell,
Where now does Reuben feed his flock,
And Joseph buy and sell?
In search of them we vainly roam
Through distant, foreign states,
Then find a people nearer home
With all the Hebrew traits.
They seize the heathen nations' land,
And hold it by the sword,
And deem themselves a righteous band.
The chosen of the Lord.
They deem themselves a righteous band,
And for religion's sake
They bravely compass sea and land
One proselyte to make.
They drive poor Hagar from their homes
The wilderness to search,
While Abraham, forsooth, becomes
A pillar in the church.
They scorn their dreaming brother's right
To visions he may have,
And to the warring Ishmaelite
They sell him as a slave.
Unmoved they hear the cry of pain,
Old Jacob's wailing note,
"An evil beast my son has slain,
There's blood on Joseph's coat."
When wearied on the desert track,
With hunger faint and weak,
Egyptian flesh pots lure them back,
The garlic and the leek.
The fruitful promised land they view,
But fear to enter in.
And wander still, a faithless crew,
The Wilderness of Sin.
Their enemies before them flee.
Their foemen's gates they hold,
But Esau's birthright still we see
To crafty Jacob sold.
They worship Aaron's golden calf,
But scorn his priestly rod,
And when from Marah's springs they quaff,
They murmur against God.
Though David's sceptre still remains
With Judah's royal line,
On Leah's sons are bloody stains,
And Ephriam's drunk with wine;
Blind Sampson, by Delilah's shears,
Is made grind Dagon's corn,
But only in a thousand years
Is there a Moses born.
RELIABILITY
Britannia's word was spoken
The feeble to defend,
That promise was not broken,
She kept it to the end.
Britannia's word is good,
Tried, tested, proved in blood,
In every land, 'mid snow or sand,
She for the truth has stood.
Britannia borrowed millions
In thrifty days of old,
Now, when she asks for billions,
She always gets the gold.
Britannia's note is good,
She signs it with her blood,
Each promise made, she fully paid,
Let cost be what it would.
Britannia's sons are falling,
The proud, the strong, the gay,
They heard their mother calling,
They would not say her, nay.
Britannia's sword is good,
She draws it when she should,
The flag that flies 'neath all the skies
A thousand years has stood.
THE McLEANS
The heather's on fire. McLeans from the byre,
The hamlet, the city, the wide open plains,
The lairds and rapscallions fill up the battalions
With blue blood, with true blood, the loyal McLeans.
They hear the drums rattle, they rush to the battle,
(Each man in the clan a base coward disdains),
They die in their glory, the trenches are gory
With red blood, with shed blood of gallant McLeans.
Afar on the heather, where hame folk foregather,
The pibroch is wailing a dirge for the slain,
The women are weeping, their lane vigils keeping,
Sair, sair, are the hearts in the clan o' McLean.
But mony will stick it, till Kaiser Bill's lickit,
And doontrodden people get back a' their ain,
Then Maids will stop greeting, for soon they'll be meeting
The bonnie brave lads o' the clan o' McLean.
FARMER JOHN SPEAKS HIS MIND
May, 1917