Forth from the lips of a warrior, girt for the battle,
Breathed this word of words o'er a world astonished.
Prisoners returning from war, and conquering armies,
Navies flusht with new and amazing victory,
Heard the message, so strange, so high, so entrancing,
And soldiers dying of wounds or the wasting of fever.
In tropic islands it sounded, through wrecks of cities;
O'er burning plains where warlike death was in waiting;
Armies and navies confronting, in watchful silence,
Heard it and wondered; statesmen stopt their debates,
And turning their eyes toward the voice, with its meaning unlooked for,
Listened and smiled with the smile and the sneer of the cynic.
But the mothers of youths who had died of their wounds and of fever,
And the poor crusht down by the price of the glory of battle
And the weight of the wars that have been, and that yet are preparing,
They from their burdens looked up and uttered their blessing:
For Peace,—the Peace of God,—was the warrior's prayer!
And I, who heard, I saw in a waking vision
An image familiar long to the hearts of mortals,
A face of trouble, a brow celestial, yet human—
In a dream of the day, I saw that suffering spirit,
Him accustomed to labor, to anguish not alien,
Still mourning for men alone in the valley of shadows;—
