TO PEACE, WITH VICTORY
Reading edition
CORINNE ROOSEVELT ROBINSON
[Sidenote: November 11, 1918]
I could not welcome you, oh! longed-for peace, Unless your coming had been heralded By victory. The legions who have bled Had elsewise died in vain for our release.
But now that you come sternly, let me kneel And pay my tribute to the myriad dead, Who counted not the blood that they have shed Against the goal their valor shall reveal.
Ah! what had been the shame, had all the stars And stripes of our brave flag drooped still unfurled, When the fair freedom of the weary world Hung in the balance. Welcome then the scars!
Welcome the sacrifice! With lifted head Our nation greets dear Peace as honor's right; And ye the Brave, the Fallen in the fight, Had ye not perished, then were honor dead!
You cannot march away! However far, Farther and faster still I shall have fled Before you; and that moment when you land, Voiceless, invisible, close at your hand My heart shall smile, hearing the steady tread Of your faith-keeping feet.
First at the trenches I shall be to greet; There's not a watch I shall not share with you; But more—but most—there where for you the red, Drenched, dreadful, splendid, sacrificial field lifts up Inflexible demand, I will be there!
My hands shall hold the cup. My hands beneath your head Shall bear you—not the stretcher bearer's—through All anguish of the dying and the dead; With all your wounds I shall have ached and bled, Waked, thirsted, starved, been fevered, gasped for breath, Felt the death dew; And you shall live, because my heart has said To Death
That Death itself shall have no part in you!