Let us not speak of the wars or be ever and ever pursuing
Tales of the madness of men and his savage turmoil;
For this is the time of the terror of hate and of great evil-doing;
But is echoes fall light where a man lives close to the soil
In a calm land and fair land fruited deeply,
Where conqueror's ruthless heel has never trod,
Where the rain falls and the sun shines, slanting steeply
On the fertile sod.
They have fashioned their engines of war from the earth of the metals it yielded,
Ingenious, mighty, the product of hand and of brain;
And the flesh of a man 'gainst their might quivers bare and for ever unshielded,
But every shot that they fire is a shot fired in vain.
For the years come and the years go, and their going
Leaves nothing with these who but death and bedevilment plan,
Who have moved scarce a pace; spite of all their aggression be showing,
From the Piltdown man.
These shall make nothing of earth, tho' they put all her lands to the slaughter;
And the toil of their hands and their culture may never abide;
For in some far corner of earth by impassable water
A race shall live on to arise, an implacable tide.
When you pass, and I pass into the darkness,
Or into light, then shall the high tide climb,
And the wise hearts conquer hate and its foul starkness,
In the fullness of time
First published in The Herald, 20 January 1938
Author reference sites: C.J. Dennis, Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Poetry Library
See also.
