Marching Feet

SE August nights, hushed but for drowsy

Of fledglings, tremble with a strange vibration,

A sound too far for hearing, sullen, dire,

Shaking the earth.

Even within the swaying veils of

We are haunted by a horror, a mistrust,

A muffled perturbation,

Vaguely

Of prodigies in birth,

Of brooding thunders unbelievable,

Fierce forces that

Against mankind.

We start awake;

The purple glooms, all

With dewy fragrance,

Our eyelids down, but still we feel the beat,

Dull, doomful, irretrievable,

Of Europe's marching feet,

Enchanted, blind,

By wizard music

Over crushed blossoms, through the mocking dust,

To baths of blood and fire.

Beyond the seas, in these hushed hills we

That hollow, rhythmic

Of nation against nation,

That ancient, bitter

Of war against a world that might be

As any golden star that rides the air.

We cannot rest for marching feet that

Harvest and home forsake,

Inexorably called to

The road of desolation,

Trampling on hearts that break.