Versos English Edward Doyle Kaiser, Beware

English poem

Kaiser, Beware

by (1854–)

Listen in the reader

Dost thou, mad Kaiser, for historic name, Set fire to Europe? Is it joy to gaze At blacker smoke than Etna's, and a blaze That wakes up Chaos, wild to come and claim The World, since Light, God-bidden though it came, Has failed to dawn upon our human ways? O Twin of Chaos! peer thou through the haze! 'Tis Human Beings feed the crackling flame.

Beware, the smoke, like Etna's, is the curse Of widows on thy people-dooming throne, And in no country, more than in thine own, Cry out all mothers: "Wherefore bear and nurse? To feed war with our sons, our flesh and bone, That chaos may reclaim the Universe?"