John Oxenham

“ Then hastily drop the vail:—for, you see,—
They are making history.
* * * * *
And history, in these dread days,
Is sore sore sad in the making;
We are building the future with our dead,
We are binding it sure with the brave blood shed,
Though our hearts are well-nigh breaking.
We can but pray that the coming day
Will reap, of our red sowing,
The harvest meet of a world complete
With the peace of God's bestowing.
So, with quiet heart, we do our part
In the travail of this mystery,
We give of our best, and we leave the rest
To Him Who maketh history. ”

“ Let not these agonies be all in vain,
Come, dwell with us again!
The world has nailed itself unto its cross;
O, tender to Thy hands its heart will prove,
For Thou alone canst heal its dreadful loss,—
Come Thou and reign in love!
Peace and the sword, Lord, Thou didst come to bring;
Too long the sword has drunk to Thy decrease.
Come now, by this high way of suffering,
And reign, O Prince of Peace!
TUNE—Artavia.
"And didst Thou love the race that loved not Thee?"
THE WINNOWING Lord, Thou hast stricken us, smitten us sore,
Winnowed us fine on the dread threshing-floor. ”

“ A LITTLE TE DEUM FOR THESE TIMES We thank Thee, Lord,
For mercies manifold in these dark days;—
For Heart of Grace that would not suffer wrong;
For all the stirrings in the dead dry bones;
For bold self-steeling to the times' dread needs;
For every sacrifice of self to Thee;
For ease and wealth and life so freely given;
For Thy deep sounding of the hearts of men;
For Thy great opening of the hearts of men;
For Thy close-knitting of the hearts of men;
For all who sprang to answer the great call;
For their high courage and self-sacrifice;
For their endurance under deadly stress ”

“ Backs and arms and heads that ache, Eyes over-tired and legs that shake, And hearts full nigh to burst and break;— Oh, it's long and long the day is! Week in, week out, not a second to spare, But though it should kill us we'll do our share, For the sake of the lads, who have gone out there For the sake of us others, to do and dare;— But it's long and long the day is!
"Rattle and clatter and clank and whirr,"
And thousands of wheels a-spinning,—
Spinning Death for the men of wrath,
Spinning Death for the broken troth,
—And Life, and a New Beginning. ”

“ Thy slaughterings,—thy treacheries,—thy thefts,—
Thy broken pacts,—thy honour in the mire,—
Thy poor humanity cast off to sate thy pride;—
'Twere better thou hadst never lived,—or died
Ere come to this.
Thou art the man! The scales were in thy hand.
For this vast wrong I hold thy soul in fee.
Seek not a scapegoat for thy righteous due,
Nor hope to void thy countability.
Until thou purge thy pride and turn to Me,—
As thou hast done, so be it unto thee!"
The shining eyes, so stern, and sweet, and sad,
Searched the hard face for sign of hopeful grace. ”

“ All that for which they fought lives on,
And flourishes triumphantly;
Watered with blood and hopeful tears,
It could not die.
The world was sinking in a slough
Of sloth, and ease, and selfish greed;
God surely sent this scourge to mould
A nobler creed.
Birth comes with travail; all these woes
Are birth-pangs of the days to be.
Life's noblest things are ever born
In agony.
So—comfort to the stricken heart! ”

“ But to every man there openeth
A High Way, and a Low.
And every man decideth
The Way his soul shall go.
AD FINEM Britain! Our Britain! uprisen in the splendour
Of your white wrath at treacheries so vile;
Roused from your sleep, become once more defender
Of those high things which make life worth life's while!
Now, God be thanked for even such a wakening
From the soft dreams of peace in selfish ease,
If it but bring about the great heart-quickening,
Of which are born the larger liberties.
Ay, better such a rousing up from slumber;
Better this fight for His High Empery ”

“ It rests with each one among us to say that that shall not be,—that the future shall repair the past,—that out of this holocaust of death shall come new life.
It behoves every one of us, each in his and her own sphere, and each in his and her own way, to strive with heart and soul for that mighty end. ”

“ But, heart abrim, and head to heaven,
Should praise his God for mercies given,
And ever cry right joyously,—
"Thy Will be done! Thy Will be done!"
"Thy Will be done!"
It is Thy Will
That Life should seek its golden prime,—
That strife 'twixt man and man should cease,—
That all Thy sons should build Thy peace. ”

“ Though apart in the city's heart he dwell,
Though he wander beyond the stars,
Though he bury himself in his nethermost hell,
And vanish behind the bars,—
No man goeth alone!
For I, God, am the soul of man,
And none can Me dethrone.
Where one is,
There am I,—
No man goeth alone! ”

“ The world is witnessing with abhorrence the results, and, we may surely hope, learning therefrom The Final Lesson for its own future guidance.
The war-cloud still hangs over us—as I write, but, grim as it is, there are not lacking gleams of its silver linings. If war brings out the very worst in human nature it offers opportunity also for the display of the very best. And, thank God, proofs of this are not wanting among us, and it is better to let one's thought range the light rather than the darkness.
What the future holds for us no man may safely say. ”

“ The Great High Way of Thy Delight.
It is the world-old strife again,—
The fight 'twixt good and ill.
Since first the curse broke out in Cain,
Each age has worn the grim red chain,
And ill fought good for sake of gain. ”

“ From the fields of fiery trying, where our bravest and our best,
By their living and their dying their souls' high faith attest,
From these dread, red fields of sorrow,
From the fight for Thy To-morrow,—
Evening brings each one at last,
To GOD'S own Peace in Thee. ”

“ And the Gleaner find nought for His gleaning.
Thy Might alone can end it,—
This fratricidal strife.
Our souls are sick with the tale of death,
Redeem us back to life!—
That the Gleaner be glad in His gleaning.
NO MAN GOETH ALONE Where one is,
There am I,—
No man goeth alone! ”

“ Those who have so nobly responded to the Call, and those who, with quiet faces and breaking hearts, have so bravely bidden them "God speed!"—with these, All is truly Well, for they are equally giving their best to what, in this case, we most of us devoutly believe to be the service of God and humanity.
War is red horror. But, better war than the utter crushing-out of liberty and civilisation under the heel of Prussian or any other militarism. ”

“ Not "Be like Christ!"—but—"Be christs!" And he used the word no doubt in its original meaning,—anointed, ordained, chosen. As such we, whose boys have gone to the Front, think of them. For they have gone, most of them, from a simple, high sense of duty, and in many cases under direst feeling of personal repulsion against the whole ghastly business. They have sacrificed everything, knowing full well that many of them will never return to us. ”

“ But I see, as all save the utterly earth-blinded must see—that when the Day of Settlement comes, and we and our allies are in a position to impose terms, unless we go into the Council-Chamber with hearts set inflexibly on the Common Weal of the World—in a word, unless we invite Christ to a seat at the Board—the end may be even worse than the beginning;—this which we have hoped and prayed night be the final war may prove but the beginning of strifes incredible. ”

“ If, in some of these verses, I have endeavoured to strike a note of warning, it is because the times, and the times that are coming, call for it. May it be heeded!
That the end of the present world-strife must and will mark also the end of the most monstrous tyranny and the most hideous conception of "Kultur" the world has ever seen, no man for one moment doubts. ”

“ But springs eternal, Fountain pure and chaste,
For cleansing of men's souls from earthly grime.
Life knows no waste. The Reaper tolls in vain,
In vain piles high his grim red harvesting,—
His dread, red harvest of the slain! ”

“ TO ALL HIS COMRADES IN ARMS ON LAND AND ON SEA AND TO ALL SORELY-TRIED HEARTS AT HOME AND ELSEWHERE THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED IN PROFOUNDEST ADMIRATION, IN MOST LOVING SYMPATHY, AND IN PERFECT ASSURANCE THAT SINCE GOD IS, RIGHT MUST WIN AND THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER THAN THE PAST FOREWORD For those who were chiefly in my heart when these verses came to me from time to time—our men and boys at the Front, and those they leave behind them in grievous sorrow and anxiety at home—my little message is that, so far as they are concerned—"ALL'S WELL!" ”

“ Germany has avowedly outmarched Christianity and left it in the rear, along with its outclassed guns and higher ideals of, say, 1870, its honour, its humanity, and all the other lumber, useless to an absolutely materialistic people whose only object is to win the world even at the price of its soul. ”

“ This same dread fruit of blood and tears,
And ruth beyond compare.
Each soul that strips it of one evil thing
Lifts all the world towards God's good purposing.
THE WAR-MAKERS Who are the Makers of Wars? The Kings of the earth. ”

“ But that is not an end but a beginning. Unless on the ashes of the past we build to nobler purpose, all our gallant dead will have been thrown away, all this gigantic effort, with all its inevitable horror and loss, will have been in vain. ”

“ All this for me, whose constant lack
Doth cause Thee constant pain?
"For this I lived, for this I died,
For this I live again."
[Transcriber's note: The first two verses of this poem were inside the book's front cover, and its last two verses were inside its back cover.]
ALL'S WELL! Is the pathway dark and dreary?
God's in His heaven!
Are you broken, heart-sick, weary?
God's in His heaven!
Dreariest roads shall have an ending,
Broken hearts are for God's mending.
All's well! All's well! ”

“ Is it done for a purpose, or just out of spite?
Is it all your own treasures you have in your pack,
That crumples your backbone and makes your ribs crack?
It is really too much for an old ass's back."
"Treasures!"—he groaned, through a lump of chewed grass,
"Are they treasures? I don't know. I'm only the ass
That carries whatever they all like to pack
On my load, without thought of my ribs or my back. ”

“ It was impossible to imagine the amount of damage done until one really saw it. The church was terrible too. The spire was sticking upside down in the ground a short distance from the door. The church itself was a mass of debris. Scarcely anything was left unhit. In the churchyard again the destruction was terrific—tombstones thrown all over the place. But the most noticeable thing of all was that the three Crucifixes—one inside and two outside—were untouched! How they can have avoided the shelling is quite beyond me. ”

“ And big folk and small folk, and all kinds of crocks.
"That mighty big bale?—Poison, that,—for the people;
Whatever else lacks they must still have their tipple.
That's The Trade, don't you know, that no one can shackle,—
'Vested Int'rests,' they call it, and that kind of cackle.
Why the Bishops themselves dare not tackle the tipple,
For it props up the church and at times builds a steeple."
(A strangely ingenuous old ass, you perceive,
Whom any shrewd rascal could easily deceive.) ”