Menella Bute Smedley (Менелла Бьют Смедли)
Lines on the Greek Massacre
White Angels, listening all around The terror, wrath, and strife of men, For faint heroic notes that sound Through the mean tumult now and then, What heard ye, that your watching eyes Received such rapture in their calm As if through common agonies They saw the halo and the palm? We only heard the bitter wail Of hearts that break, and prayers that fail; We only saw the shame, the pain, Of England on her knees in vain, Pleading for sons ignobly slain; That fruitless death, these helpless tears, Shall scar and stain the coming years With savage infamy of crime Thrust through our tender modern Time. On this grand soil which year by year Renews the unforgotten bloom Of deeds which Time but makes more clear And Deaths which nothing can entomb, They fell, but did not add a name To Earth's broad characters of gold; There, in the citadel of Fame They died, with nothing to be told, While schoolboy memories thronged their ears With echoes from the calling years, And brought the happy Morning back As closed the darkness cold and black; How fair was Life when first they read Of these familiar glorious themes! The classic ground which holds them dead Was longed for in their college dreams, When links of light bound land to land Like comrades clasping hand in hand, As English youth, athirst for fame, Caught up the old Athenian flame; Yet, mourners, on these nameless pangs Henceforth a new tradition hangs, For here, by loftier hopes consoled Than soothed the Demigods of old, By angel ministries upheld, By saints awaited and beheld, These perished not, but passed from sight Into the Bosom of the Light. For us, one tremulous sigh of prayer Hallows the conquest-breathing air More than all shouts for heroes spent Who died not knowing where they went. Here shall be told, when pilgrims come, How each his brother strove to cheer; How tenderly they talked of home, How they seemed ignorant of fear, Patient and yet prepared for strife; While one, the gentlest, turned from life So sweetly, that no tongue can say If it was rent or given away. And as, where loyal warriors sink, We, passing by the place, may pause, To think, not of their names, but think Of their great Leader and their Cause; So, by this grave and gate of death Abides the murmur of a breath Recalling to the passers-by Not Marathon, but Calvary!
Menella Bute Smedley’s other poems:
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