A Song of the War

A Song of the War

A bard made rhyme on the king's highway,

A migrant minstrel bold,

And all who tarried were scofful, they,

The pilgrim old, the courtier gay,

For he sang of war, — 'twas a direful lay,

An ominous song of old.

The king swept by with his pageantry,

Nor hearkened the hateful lore;

No alms to a vagrant minstrelsy,

While he of the realm's first majesty

Must hie him away on his embassy,

In revelry far from war.

The martsman's visage was seamed with care,

As over the hill he climbed,

With gold elusive and hard to spare;

What mattered to him the minstrel's ware,

That out on the highway over there

The woe of the years was rhymed?

They passed him by through the lowering day,

The sorrowing minstrel aeer,

A hurrying, motley pageant they,

The viceroy and the poppinjay,

The lovedorn churl and the maiden gay,

With never an ear to hear.

They passed him by in their panoply,

When they charged at the tocsin call,

And theirs was a frenzied errantry,

To fight for a liege and a dynasty,

When every stroke was catastrophe,

And the liege of all was thrall.

They passed him by on the highway old,

A wearying, contrite throng,

The vanquished king to his gyves cajoled,

The martman stark with his tawdry gold,,

'Tis only the minstrel brave and bold

Who lives in the ominous song.

Bertha A. Kleinman.

Mesa, Arizona