THE KAISER AND GOD
by: Barry Pain (1867-1928)
- [I rejoice with you
in Wilhelms first victory. How magnificently God supported
him!Telegram from the Kaiser to the Crown Princess.]
ED by Wilhelm, as you tell,
- God has done extremely well;
- You with patronizing nod
- Show that you approve of God.
- Kaiser, face a question new--
- This--does God approve of you?
-
- Broken pledges, treaties torn,
- Your first page of war adorn;
- We on fouler things must look
- Who read further in that book,
- Where you did in time of war
- All that you in peace forswore,
- Where you, barbarously wise,
- Bade your soldiers terrorize,
-
- Where you made--the deed was fine--
- Women screen your firing line.
- Villages burned down to dust,
- Torture, murder, bestial lust,
- Filth too foul for printers ink,
- Crime from which the apes would shrink--
- Strange the offerings that you press
- On the God of Righteousness!
-
- Kaiser, when youd decorate
- Sons or friends who serve your State,
- Not that Iron Cross bestow,
- But a cross of wood, and so--
- So remind the world that you
- Have made Calvary anew.
-
- Kaiser, when youd kneel in prayer
- Look upon your hands, and there
- Let that deep and awful stain
- From the blood of children slain
- Burn your very soul with shame,
- Till you dare not breathe that Name
- That now you glibly advertise--
- God as one of your allies.
-
- Impious braggart, you forget;
- God is not your conscript yet;
- You shall learn in dumb amaze
- That His ways are not your ways,
- That the mire through which you trod
- Is not the high white road of God.
To Whom, whichever way the combat rolls,
We, fighting to the end, commend our souls.
"The Kaiser and God" is
reprinted from A Treasury of War Poetry. Ed. George Herbert
Clarke. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1917. |
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POEMS BY BARRY PAIN |
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