The Holy Armistice

— 1908 —

Peace they had known: such peace as men may know
Living and moving in a world of men.
They saw the drowsy seasons come and go
On quiet feet. There came no whisper then
Of brooding terror, of a world aflame;
For, in this land by bloodless conquest won,
Where war was but a legend and a name,
They were but children playing in the sun.

Peace they had known; such as imperfect earth
Yields to her erring sons in rich, fat days;
When furtive evidence of man’s unworth
Peeps out to mock fine tales of sterner ways.
Yet, born to peace, still in their veins there ran,
Stirring uneasy dreams of racial youth,
Blood of their sires and many a fighting man
Who fell upholding Liberty and Truth.

Then do we grieve — we whom they left behind?
Do we grieve selfishly that they should find
The thing they sought upon a foreign field —
That such a consummation fate should yield
Even to these our dearest? Earthly eyes
Have not yet pierced the secrets of the skies.
Then who shall say those sires they failed to meet
Whom, shouting thro’ the skies, they went to greet?

—1918—

War they have known as never men knew war.
Before sweet Death had beckoned them to rest
They garnered terrible and precious lore
And learned of mankind all the worst — and best.
They had full vision of the lurking beast —
Man’s heritage from out the murk of yore
That drives him lusting to the fearful feast
Of pain and carnage that the world calls War.

Pain they have known, and all the needless dread
That man alone can bring to fellow man —
Shrieks of the wounded, and the huddled dead —
Horrors unknown since first the world began.
Yet learned they too of brotherhood, of worth
That draws man ever nearer to his God,
Of love that cannot perish from the earth
Even tho’ Justice sleep and Mercy nod.

Yet, do we grieve? Knowing the worst and best.
Was it not meet that they at last should rest?
They were too wise for earth, too ripe for bliss
To tarry, more in such a world as this.
Death came to them as Spring comes to the Earth
Exulting, with the promise of new birth,
Then should we grieve, or question, or condemn
That Holy Armistice prepared for them?

—1926—

The Holy Armistice. ‘Tis surely those —
The weary young to whom swift wisdom came —
Who know the peace no living mortal, knows
Here in a world of mortal’s hate and blame.
‘Tis surely those who, yielding their last breath
Amid the saddest folly Earth can show,
Glimpsing a perfect peace, hold out to Death
An eager hand and, smiling, gladly go.

The Holy Armistice. ‘Tis they, not we
Who end the quest and reach the long sought goal
That man is ever seeking urgently —
The last glad haven for his harried soul.
Theirs is the victory. For us the strife,
The pain, the turmoil, be it peace or war,
That yet must burden those who cleave to life
Thwarted, till kind Death bids them seek no more.

Yet do we grieve for them? Why should we grieve?
Whether our groping minds seek to believe
That they have won oblivion in the grave,
Or some Valhalla of the deathless brave,
They are the conquerors! They are the blest,
And theirs the triumph of an ended quest —
A triumph none may know till battles cease —
The Holy Armistice, the Perfect Peace.

“C. J. Dennis”
Herald, 10 November 1928, p8