As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poets’ Corner  

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914 before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed, artists who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other, writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy, writers of not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and the maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets, musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man, that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist, world and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels.

And then the war drums intensified and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for….            

 A PRAYER IN TIME OF WAR [ The war will change many things in art and life, and among them, it is to be hoped, many of our own ideas as to what is, and what is not, "intellectual."] Thou, whose deep ways are in the sea, Whose footsteps are not known, To-night a world that turned from Thee Is waiting--at Thy Throne. The towering Babels that we raised Where scoffing sophists brawl, The little Antichrists we praised-- The night is on them all. _The fool hath said.... The fool hath said...._ And we, who deemed him wise, We who believed that Thou wast dead, How should we seek Thine eyes? How should we seek to Thee for power Who scorned Thee yesterday? How should we kneel, in this dread hour? Lord, teach us how to pray! Grant us the single heart, once more, That mocks no sacred thing, The Sword of Truth our fathers wore When Thou wast Lord and King. Let darkness unto darkness tell Our deep unspoken prayer, For, while our souls in darkness dwell, We know that Thou art there. _Alfred Noyes_