Hymn To The God Of War

From every quarter we,     Who bent the trembling knee     And cowered or grovelled prostrate day and night,     Now come once more to sing     A dirge before thee, King,     Once more with earnest heart to do thee right.     Have we not hailed thee God?     Our weary feet have trod     The vasty barren sands and treacherous ice,     With many a bitter cry,     To pile thine altar high     With pallid human hearts in sacrifice.     We hated thee and came     With eyes of shifty shame,     With heavy steel above the craven breast,     Yet evermore we did     The ill thy servants bid,     For everywhere thy might was manifest.     At thy sibilant word     We were filled with distrust,     And we glared on each other,     All horribly stirred     Against sister and brother;     Our green hopes were wilted and riven, our red-running blood was as dust.     And a foul poison ran     Through the veins of the world,     And we waited and wondered.     By magical ban     We were cruelly sundered,     Then a maniac hatred upcaught us and deep into hell we were hurled.     We have crept to thee, God,     In the day of thy wrath,     We have wept, we have fasted,     We have crimsoned the sod     That thy worship has blasted,     And have seen thee stalk pale and triumphant where nations fell flat in thy path.     Yet out of the dust and the flame,     The squalor and muddle of crime,     A red waving blossom there came     And a scent on the tempest of time.     Heroic and splendid, we threw     Our lives to be oil in the fire,     But a marvel of fellowship grew     As the blaze bickered broader and higher,     And the soul of a people stood up, and spoke to us all from the pyre.     And lo, we are come to thy shrine,     O God, but we ask for no grace,     For our hearts are made glad with a wine     That is death to the craven and base,     And thy shrine shall be burnt for our mirth     And thine altar be turned to thy bier,     For, if Love be our Lord upon earth,     What corner is left for thee here?     The veil of thy temple is rentand behold, thou hast vanished, O Fear!