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Waves that marched to the western coast past forests and plains, mountains and deserts, and wrought their work in a world gone by.

And the ripple of the ranks of these regiments that march to suffer and to die, is the ripple of a great brown river in flood that forges seaward;

And the ripple of the light on eyes and lips that watch and work, is the swelling of a greater flood that forces them to go.

And the ripple and arrest of light on dull gun-barrels that crest their flow are runes of a ritual spelled in steel and a service enduring.

And each beat of their feet and each beat of their hearts is a word in a gospel of steel that says the nations through ruins grow one again;

When God's drill-master War has welded nations in ranks that their children may serve Him together.

For tomorrow makes way for them.

John Curtis Underwood

THE OLD GODS

The Old Gods never die,
They only watch and wait;
They wait for a thousand years
Beside the tall church gate.

Jove and Neptune and Mars,

Tyr and Odin and Thor,

These watch with the ageless stars,

They watch forevermore.

They call with the worn bronze trumpets,

They call and all men hear.

Their voice is deeper than church bells,
Deeper than chimes rung clear.
It charms like the seraphim's,
And is older than all the hymns.

We hear the tramp of many feet
Upon the ancient pavements of the Gods.
We see the people hasten from the street,
Chanting their lauds.

Their fashion's garments off they cast
And don the shag-skins of the past.

The Old Gods rule the seas,

And men are fed to the waves.

The Old Gods burn the cities;

They bind and ravish their slaves.

They ride on the storm and the lightning,

They revel in jungle and brake,

They inhabit the seats of the thunders
When the tempests in wrath awake.

A strange, strange smile

Is the Old Gods', while

They hope for the Cross to fall

And they be lords of all.

Jove and Neptune and Mars,

Tyr and Odin and Thor,

These watch with the ageless stars,

They watch forevermore.

The Old Gods never die,

They only watch and wait,

They wait for a thousand years
Beside the tall church gate.

Calvin Dill Wilson

KOL NIDRE

When twilight charms the sunset into dusk
The singer comes. I do not know his step
Nor ever have I seen the form of him.

But when through darkening window-panes I reach
My vision for that straining star whose course
Was preconceived in me, and with me

I know must pass forever, I hear his voice:
Deep rhythm circling stern creation's path
And passing far beyond it-Kol Nidre!
A little silence-all is swept away;
And there are only God and nothingness
Myself besides, I who am more than God
And less than nothingness-for it is rest.

As from dissolving mists sudden appears
The city's countenance, so from these days,
Melting like mists away, rise clear and stern
The towers of the solemn days that were:
Dread days of reckoning whose shofar blasts
Like thunder, dawns of upturned faces, pleas
Like wrath of midnight storms, sing in my blood
Wakening memories long dead, best dead

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Two thousand years of listless wandering!
Ages without a battle cry! Lo, he

Who sings behind the wall is meek; the words

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Flow gently from his soul, and you whose song
Is light, unburdened by our Elohim,

Cannot conceive the terrible despair!

But we who sing it know, for as we sing
We suffer. Every note a lash! Each word
A lovely daughter's shame! Ay, every verse
A noble city's doom of martyrdom!

And the whole song the story of a race

Which wrought God from itself and lost its soul.

Give me

Kol Nidre! and a hundred armies march
Retreat! A hundred armies bannerless and slow,
A far-flung shadow o'er the fields of earth,
March through my soul and will not cease.
Your crucifix, children of Christendom,
The thing you hold up to the sun, and wail
And moan-your sign of suffering!

The dead have pride, and seeing it on me

Will go their way. Yet I'll not desecrate

The dead! Their pride-'twas all they had in life!

Kol Nidre! God! will this never have end?
These mighty trumpet blasts-for whom?-the dead?
They do not hear, I say.

The living? Lord! Have you no laughter left?
These living, straws out in your mighty storm,
They do not hear your storm, only the cries

Of bleeding lambs and drowning swine reach them.

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