A voice for ever stilled, a memory, Since you went eastward with the fighting ships, A hero of the great new Odyssey, And God has laid His finger on your lips. _Moray Dalton_ THE PLAYERS We challenged Death. He threw with weighted dice. We laughed and paid the forfeit, glad to pay-- Being recompensed beyond our sacrifice With that nor Death nor Time can take away. _Francis Bickley_ A SONG Oh, red is the English rose, And the lilies of France are pale, And the poppies grow in the golden wheat, For the men whose eyes are heavy with sleep, Where the ground is red as the English rose, And the lips as the lilies of France are pale, And the ebbing pulses beat fainter and fainter and fail. Oh, red is the English rose, And the lilies of France are pale. And the poppies lie in the level corn For the men who sleep and never return. But wherever they lie an English rose So red, and a lily of France so pale, Will grow for a love that never and never can fail. _Charles Alexander Richmond_ HARVEST MOON Over the twilight field, Over the glimmering field And bleeding furrows, with their sodden yield Of sheaves that still did writhe, After the scythe; The teeming field, and darkly overstrewn With all the garnered fullness of that noon-- Two looked upon each other. One was a Woman, men had called their mother: And one the Harvest Moon. And one the Harvest Moon Who stood, who gazed On those unquiet gleanings, where they bled; Till the lone Woman said: "But we were crazed.... We should laugh now together, I and you; We two. You, for your ever dreaming it was worth A star's while to look on, and light the earth; And I, for ever telling to my mind Glory it was and gladness, to give birth To human kind. I gave the breath,--and thought it not amiss, I gave the breath to men, For men to slay again; Lording it over anguish, all to give My life, that men might live, For this. "You will be laughing now, remembering We called you once Dead World, and barren thing. Yes, so we called you then, You, far more wise Than to give life to men." Over the field that there Gave back the skies A scattered upward stare From sightless eyes, The furrowed field that lay Striving awhile, through many a bleeding dune Of throbbing clay,--but dumb and quiet soon, She looked; and went her way, The Harvest Moon. _Josephine Preston Peabody_ HARVEST MOON: 1916 Moon, slow rising, over the trembling sea-rim, Moon of the lifted tides and their folded burden. Look, look down. And gather the blinded oceans, Moon of compassion. Come, white Silence, over the one sea pathway: Pour with hallowing hands on the surge and outcry, Silver flame; and over the famished blackness, Petals of moonlight. Once again, the formless void of a world-wreck Gropes its way through the echoing dark of chaos; Tide on tide, to the calling, lost horizons,-- One in the darkness.