Cloyd Head. Prelude. Harriet Monroe, ed. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912-22

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.

Prelude

By Cloyd Head


From “War Sequence” I THOUGHT—
Surely, of those in battle, one, bearing the impulse of the years before—the splendid sunset—would create a song,
A song of war!

But none—not one has spoken. And the singers die, fighting in silence, comrade by comrade—fall, leaving above their death no Marseillaise.

I thought—	5
My people, finding perhaps their freedom in a war for freedom, might find also utterance, singing of the rite of hecatombs offered to greater than a god.

But none—not one has spoken … Over France—the voice of France is Rheims, a threnody graven in silence. Yet the song to break the anguish of that silence, the life-song uttered, not the dirge of Rheims?