By the God of morning glories climbing blue the doors of quiet homes, by the God of tall hollyhocks laughing glad to children in peaceful valleys, by the God of new mothers wishing peace to sit at windows nursing babies,

I swear only reckless men, ready to throw away their lives by hunger, deprivation, desperate clinging to a single purpose imperturbable and undaunted, men with the primitive guts of rebellion,

Only fighters gaunt with the red brand of labor’s sorrow on their brows and labor’s terrible pride in their blood, men with souls asking danger—only these will save and keep the four big brothers.

Good-night is the word, good-night to the kings, to the czars,

Good-night to the kaiser.

The breakdown and the fade-away begins.

The shadow of a great broom, ready to sweep out the trash, is here.

One finger is raised that counts the czar,

The ghost who beckoned men who come no more—

The czar gone to the winds on God’s great dustpan,

The czar a pinch of nothing,

The last of the gibbering Romanoffs.

Out and good-night—

The ghosts of the summer palaces

And the ghosts of the winter palaces!

Out and out, good-night to the kings, the czars, the kaisers.

Another finger will speak,

And the kaiser, the ghost who gestures a hundred million sleeping-waking ghosts,

The kaiser will go onto God’s great dustpan—

The last of the gibbering Hohenzollerns.

Look! God pities this trash, God waits with a broom and a dustpan,

God knows a finger will speak and count them out.

It is written in the stars;

It is spoken on the walls;

It clicks in the fire-white zigzag of the Atlantic wireless;

It mutters in the bastions of thousand-mile continents;

It sings in a whistle on the midnight winds from Walla Walla to Mesopotamia:

Out and good-night.

The millions slow in khaki,

The millions learning Turkey in the Straw and John Brown’s Body,

The millions remembering windrows of dead at Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and Spotsylvania Court House,

The millions dreaming of the morning star of Appomattox,

The millions easy and calm with guns and steel, planes and prows:

There is a hammering, drumming hell to come.

The killing gangs are on the way.

God takes one year for a job.

God takes ten years or a million.

God knows when a doom is written.

God knows this job will be done and the words spoken:

Out and good-night.

The red tubes will run,

And the great price be paid,

And the homes empty,

And the wives wishing,

And the mothers wishing.

There is only one way now, only the way of the red tubes and the great price.

Well . . .

Maybe the morning sun is a five-cent yellow balloon,

And the evening stars the joke of a God gone crazy.

Maybe the mothers of the world,

And the life that pours from their torsal folds—

Maybe it’s all a lie sworn by liars,

And a God with a cackling laughter says: