When The Millennium Comes
EN the Millennium
Only the kings will fight,
While the princes beat the drums,
And the queens in aprons white,
Arnica bottle in hand,
Watch their Majesties throw,
With a gesture vague and grand,
Their crowns at the dodging foe,
Poor old obsolete
That Time hangs up in a row.
When the Millennium
And the proud steel navies meet,
While the furious boiler hums,
And the vengeful pistons beat,
The sailors will stay on
And cheer with a polyglot
The self-fed cannon that
Till metal has fought it out,
But the warm, glad bodies of
Are not for the waves to flout.
When the Millennium comes,
Love, the mother of life,
Will have worked out all the
Of our dim industrial strife,
And every man shall be
Of his deed and his dream, and the
Of war shall be
As a dragon-tale of yore,
Myth of the Iron Age,
A monster earth breeds no more.
Katharine Lee Bates
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