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Title: Blasted Hopes
Author: Abner Cosens [
More Titles by Cosens]
We hoped to end our troubled days
Far from the maddening strife,
Erstwhile to chortle roundelays
Of peaceful country life;
But now the phone rings night and morn,
The trolleys crash and bang;
We hear the fearsome auto horn
Where once the thrushes sang.
We hoped the children that we raised,
Those stalwart girls and boys;
Would follow in the trail we blazed
That selfish ease destroys;
But now, when men are needed so
To fight the mailed fist,
Our girls won't let their husbands go,
Nor will our sons enlist.
We hoped the pirates all were dead,
Those horrid buccaneers,
Who dyed the ocean's waves with red,
In wicked bygone years:
But now we mourn, as happy days,
That sanguinary past,
Since Kaiser Bill a hundred ways,
Has Captain Kidd outclassed.
We hoped that kings had wiser grown
Since Charles I. lost his head,
And Bonaparte was overthrown,
For painting Europe red;
But now we have the greatest kill
Since cave men fought with stones.
Behold the Kaiser's butcher bill!
Ten million dead men's bones.
[The end]
Abner Cosens's poem: Blasted Hopes
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