Justice

    The load our sons must bear.

Before we loose the word

    That bids new worlds to birth,

Needs must we loosen first the sword

    Of Justice upon earth;

Or else all else is vain

    Since life on earth began,

And the spent world sinks back again

    Hopeless of God and Man.

A People and their King

    Through ancient sin grown strong,

Because they feared no reckoning

    Would set no bound to wrong;

But now their hour is past,

    And we who bore it find

Evil Incarnate held at last

    To answer to mankind.

For agony and spoil

    Of nations beat to dust,

For poisoned air and tortured soil

    And cold, commanded lust,

And every secret woe

    The shuddering waters saw—

Willed and fulfilled by high and low—

    Let them relearn the Law:

That when the dooms are read,

    Not high nor low shall say:—

"My haughty or my humble head

    Has saved me in this day."

That, till the end of time,

    Their remnant shall recall

Their fathers' old, confederate crime

    Availed them not at all:

That neither schools nor priests,

    Nor Kings may build again

A people with the heart of beasts

    Made wise concerning men.

Whereby our dead shall sleep

    In honour, unbetrayed,

And we in faith and honour keep

    That peace for which they paid.