Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Prelude

Cloyd Head

I THOUGHT—

Surely, of those in battle, one, bearing the impulse of the years before—the splendid sunset—would create a song,

A song of war!

But none—not one has spoken. And the singers die, fighting in silence, comrade by comrade—fall, leaving above their death no Marseillaise.

I thought—

My people, finding perhaps their freedom in a war for freedom, might find also utterance, singing of the rite of hecatombs offered to greater than a god.

But none—not one has spoken … Over France—the voice of France is Rheims, a threnody graven in silence. Yet the song to break the anguish of that silence, the life-song uttered, not the dirge of Rheims?