Lillian Rozell Messenger: Why this feast of shells each day, the fury, blood and wail of war?

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

American writers on peace and against war

Women writers on peace and war

Lillian Rozell Messenger: Seeking a new world of peace

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Lillian Rozell Messenger
“The Time Needs Heart”

New science-ships sail in from vasty seas,
And touch our shores, and leave the keys
Of secret worlds, with giants of high thought –
The wise who toiled and wrought –
Then pass to other shores of truth:
Albeit with every treasure great they bring,
The mighty bard, and poets truly sing,
With all of mind and science, creed, and art,
“The time needs Heart!”

Invention stands supreme on summits high,
With eager, piercing eye;
Above the world, colossal queen, she coils
Around her secrets, strands as strong as steel,
Yet light as mist from brow to heel,
And signs: -“The world is mine!”
While greed laughs out, “Nay, mine, not thine!”
Still comes the poet’s song from vale and height:
“‘Tis never might makes right,
But love, supreme o’er mind and art;
“The time needs Heart!”

And art speaks out her dream: “The world is mine;
I came of and I give you the divine;
In every music-note, star-wave, and flower
I the resultant am of mind and power.”
But still, the lonely bard who died for bread,
The hapless sculptor by his statue dead,
Gave their true souls mayhap for love, not art;
“The iron age needs Heart!”

Else why this feast of shells each day
For men? this weeping in life’s sorrow-vale
Of tortured souls? The prisoner on his way
To double-death? the fury, blood and wail
Of war, involving men in God’s great image made?
Why should one creature be of life afraid?
Alas, the age of iron, greed and gain
Puts out the torch, the truth and flame
Of love and art as on each soul (the poet’s page),
Of this most wonderous age,
Is burned – “The time needs heart !”