POETRY.
LOUVAIN.
(To Dam. Bruno Destree, 0.8.B.)
IT was the very heart of Peace that thrilled In the deep minster bell's far-throbbing sound, When over old roofs evening seemed to build Security that this world never found.
Your cloister looked from Caesar's rampart high O'er the fair city. Clustered orchard trees Married their dreaming murmur with the sky.
It was the haunt of lore and living peaoe.
And there we talked of youth's delightful years In Italy, in England. Now, 0 friend, I know not if I speak to living ears Or if upon you too has come the end.
Peace is in Louvain; dead peace of spilt blood Upon the mounded ashes where she stood.
Yet from that blood, those ashes, there arose Not hoped-for terror cowering as it ran, But divine anger flaming upon those Defamers of the very name of man, Abortions of their blind hyena-creed, Who—for "protection" of their battle-host Against the unarmed of those they had made to bleed, Whose hearts they had tortured to the uttermost Without a cause, past pardon—fired and tore The towers of fame and beauty, while they shot And butchered the defenceless at each door.
But History shall hang them high, to rot Unburied, in the face of wrath unborn, Mankind's abomination and last scorn.
LAURENCE MAYON.
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