Shells through the farmhouse roof, where the green moss grew on the shingles; Shattered the apple-tree now, where the robin would sing at the sunset; Shall there be song again, in a world given over to devils? Shattered the stones of the dead, and about them the shapes of the dying; Boom, boom, boom after boom to the right, to the left, in the centre, Endless--will it be endless? and how shall the spirit endure it? What did it mean in the heaven? Ah surely, black lips of the cannon, Surely you spake in your wrath, and the soul of the world understood you! Else it were horror indeed, and the blind brute rage of the jungle, Earth returning to slime, and the hissing and tearing of dragons! Guns of the Gettysburg heights, ye spake, in your awful contending, Words ye spake through the cloud, with august oracular voices, Mighty reverberant watchwords of Titan-forces in conflict: Crying, “The feuds of States!” and replying, “The peace of a Nation!” Crying, “The sundered stars!” and replying, “The heavens in their clusters Led in the lines of law, and linked in their differing glory Star unto star to the end, until God folds them up as a vesture!” Crying, “The old-time pride, and the chivalrous grace and the splendor, Feudal rule of the Few, and a serfdom meet for the Many!” Thundering out of the cloud, as the Voice on the summit of Sinai, “Nay! But the larger Hope, and the limitless future of Manhood!” These were the words that ye uttered, O hot black lips of the cannon, Catching them up from the lips of the orators fallen on silence, Voices of lion-like men, in senates no longer resounding; Now the debate was yours: and above it, the Arbiter waited! V