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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Hermann Hagedorn

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Fatherland

Hermann Hagedorn

THERE is no sword in my hand

Where I watch oversea.

Father’s land, mother’s land,

What will you say of me,

Who am blood of your German blood,

Through and through,

Yet would not, if I could,

Slaughter for you?

What will you say of one

Who has no heart

Even to cheer you on?

No heavens part,

No guiding God appears

To my strained eyes.

Athwart the fog of fears

And hates and lies,

I see no goal, I mark

No ringing message flying;

Only a brawl in the dark

And death and the groans of the dying.

For you, your men of dreams

And your strong men of deeds

Crumble, and die with screams,

And under hoofs like weeds

Are trampled; for you,

In city and on hill

Voices you knew

And needed are still.

And roundabout

Harbor and shoal

The lights of your soul

Go out.

To what end, O Fatherland?

I see your legions sweep

Like waves up the gray strand.

I hear your women weep.

And the sound is as the groaning

Swish of the ebbing wave—

A nation’s pitiful moaning

Beside an open grave.

Ah, Fatherland, not all

Who love you most,

Armed to triumph or fall,

March with your mighty host.

Some there are yet, as I,

Who stand apart,

And with aching heart

Ponder the Whither and Why

Of the tragic story,

Asking with bated breath,

Which way lies glory,

And which way, death?