Red Easter
By Marion Brown
(In “Femina.”)
This is a spring that has no Easter Day.
Even the little children must be told
That all the beauty of the world is sold;
And in the grim, gray ranks of war’s array
Christ’s carols turn to knells of loud dismay.
Nor women’s tears nor kingly power nor gold
Can resurrect the forms the trenches hold.
Ah, children murmur softly at your play
Lest your sweet mirth like poisoned darts be sped
Swift to the widowed mother hearts reviled
Twice over as they clasp their still-born dead.
Pray, children, for the world’s unreconciled!
Ye are our only lilies undefiled—
The others are incarnadined too red.