The early and the latter rain.

The noble banyan dying lives,
In youth 'twould shield a single man,
In age its spreading shelter gives
Shade for a prince's caravan.

No weaklings these, their roots deep down
In Mother Earth retain their hold.
To heaven they raise a leafy crown,
Sound-hearted, loyal, earnest-souled.

WHO KNOWS

=The pessimist=

Our lot is cast in evil days
We almost lose our faith in God,
We cannot comprehend His ways,
Nor recognize His chast'ning rod.
To stem the Hun's relentless tread,
His hymns of hate, his crimes of Cain
We give our daily toll of dead,
But wonder if 'tis all in vain.

=The Optimist=

Brave men must fight, brave men must fall,
Whene'er a tyrant lifts his head;
When Freedom sounds her battle call,
We must not grudge our noble dead.
E'en now the victor's shouts we hear,
On blood bought hill, o'er shell-swept plain;
The end of tyranny is near,
Our struggle has not been in vain.

=The Socialist=

If, when our cheering shall have died,
No more for sordid grain we plan,
But shed the hoofs and horns of pride,
And strive to help our fellow man,
So each will get a fair return
For labor done by hand or brain
And none can take what others earn;
The war will not have been in vain.

=The Anarchist=

If still the selfish creed we preach
Of pleasure, ease and strife for gold;
Employer, and employee, each
Resentful, greedy, uncontrolled;
Then poor men still will curse the great,
And hellish hordes will rise again
With hungry, hardened, Hunnish hate;
This war will have been fought in vain.

AFTERWARDS

When the war shall have ceased with its sorrow,
Its hunger, and horror, and hell,
In the dawn of a brighter to-morrow,
What tale will historians tell?
Will the nations get records of glory,
Of cowardice, courage or crime,
When the sages record the true story,
To ring down the decades of time?

We believe that some peoples now broken,
And crushed by the Turk and the Hun
Will arise from their darkness unspoken,
And stand in the light of the sun.
And it may be that Germans, grown wiser
And taught at so fearful a cost,
Will have hanged their contemptible Kaiser