Produced by Ted Garvin, Tonya Allen and PG Distributed Proofreaders
1919
These are verses that came to me in this dreadful war time amid the caresand labors of a heavy task.
Two of the poems, "A Scrap of Paper" and "Stand Fast," were written in1914 and bore the signature Civis Americanus—the use of my ownname at the time being impossible. Two others, "Lights Out" and "Remarksabout Kings," were read for me by Robert Underwood Johnson at the meetingof the American Academy in Boston, November, 1915, at which I was unableto be present.
The rest of the verses were printed after I had resigned my diplomatic postand was free to say what I thought and felt, without reserve.
The "Interludes in Holland" are thoughts of the peaceful things that willabide for all the world after we have won this war against war.
SYLVANORA, October 1, 1917.
June 1914
In the pleasant time of Pentecost,
By the little river Kyll,
I followed the angler's winding path
Or waded the stream at will.
And the friendly fertile German land
Lay round me green and still.
But all day long on the eastern bank
Of the river cool and clear,
Where the curving track of the double rails
Was hardly seen though near,
The endless trains of German troops
Went rolling down to Trier.
They packed the windows with bullet heads
And caps of hodden gray;
They laughed and sang and shouted loud
When the trains were brought to a stay;
They waved their hands and sang again
As they went on their iron way.
No shadow fell on the smiling land,
No cloud arose in the sky;
I could hear the river's quiet tune
When the trains had rattled by;
But my heart sank low with a heavy sense
Of trouble,—I knew not why.
Then came I into a certain field
Where the devil's paint-brush spread
'Mid the gray and green of the rolling hills
A flaring splotch of red,
An evil omen, a bloody sign,
And a token of many dead.
I saw in a vision the field-gray horde
Break forth at the devil's hour,
And trample the earth into crimson mud
In the rage of the Will to Power,—
All this I dreamed in the valley of Kyll,
At the sign of