TYRANNY.

New Zealand Tablet, 7 November 1918, Page 43

TYRANNY.

On that high day when God above all pleas I f'■'.':■"'. >- Shall call the trembling nations to His knees And bid them lay, in wide feudality, Between His hands their share of sky and sea, What wilt thou say when from thy bitter side Shall slip, with vassal foot, a child, great-eyed, With cloudy head, and little lips of woe That tell their tale to God with sobbing slow? "Dear God, dear God, this one, this giant one, Put forth his shadow 'twixt me and the sun, Till all the land, and I with it, grew cold, And in the field the wheat-ears lost their gold, " Fear caught the throat of every singing lark,' How could they sing their songs towards the dark ? And in the land men moaned or made mad mirth, My twilight gave wild jesters to the earth. At last, in doubt and dying, many a one Crept broken from my side to find the sun, And those who did not go cried out for aid, But I, a child, how could I fight the shade?" How wilt thou answer God above that cloudy head, What say to Him for whom the west is red, Who saw from mutant space the stars arise, What wilt thou answer"then to those grave eyes? —E. D.