A thousand creeds and battle-cries,
A thousand warring social
schemes,
A thousand new moralities,
And twenty thousand thousand
dreams!
Each on his own anarchic way,
From the old order breaking
free,-
Our ruined world desires, you say,
Licence, once more, not
Liberty.
But ah, beneath the struggling foam,
When storm and change are
on the deep,
How quietly the tides come home,
And how the depths of sea-shine
sleep;
And we who march towards a goal,
Destroying only to fulfil
The law, the law of that great soul
Which moves beneath your alien
will;
We, that like foemen meet the past
Because we bring the future,
know
We only fight to achieve at last
A great re-union with our
foe;
Re-union in the truths that stand
When all our wars are rolled
away;
Re-union of the heart and hand
And of the prayers wherewith
we pray;
Re-union in the common needs,
The common strivings of mankind;
Re-union of our warring creeds
In the one God that dwells
behind.
Then-in that day-we
shall not meet
Wrong with new wrong, but
right with right;
Our faith shall make your faith complete
When our battalions re-unite.
Forward!-what use in idle words?-
Forward, O warriors of the
soul!
There will be breaking up of swords
When that new morning makes
us whole.