Chapter VIII: Palinode of Victory

Beer is free to soldiers
In every bar and tavern
As the regiments victorious
March under garlands to the city square.

Beer is free to soldiers
And lips are free, and women,
Breathless, stand on tiptoe
To see the flushed young thousands in advance.

"Beer is free to soldiers;
Give all to the liberators" ...
Under wreaths of laurel
And small and large flags fluttering, victorious,
They of the frock-coats, with clink of official chains,
Are welcoming with eloquence outpouring
The liberating thousands, the victorious;
In their speaking is a soaring of great phrases,
Balloons of tissue paper,
Hung with patriotic bunting,
That rise serene into the blue,
While the crowds with necks uptilted
Gaze at their upward soaring
Till they vanish in the blue;
And each man feels the blood of life
Rumble in his ears important
With participation in Events.

But not the fluttering of great flags
Or the brass bands blaring, victorious,
Or the speeches of persons in frock coats,
Who pause for the handclapping of crowds,
Not the stamp of men and women dancing,
Or the bubbling of beer in the taverns,--
Frothy mugs free for the victorious--,
Not all the trombone-droning of Events,
Can drown the inextinguishible laughter of the gods.

And they hear it, the old hooded houses,
The great creaking peak-gabled houses,
That gossip and chuckle to each other
Across the clattering streets;
They hear it, the old great gates,
The grey gates with towers,
Where in the changing shrill winds of the years
Have groaned the poles of many various-colored banners.
The poplars of the high-road hear it,
From their trembling twigs comes a dry laughing,
As they lean towards the glare of the city.
And the old hard-laughing paving-stones,
Old stones weary with the weariness
Of the labor of men's footsteps,
Hear it as they quake and clamour
Under the garlanded wheels of the yawning confident cannon
That are dragged victorious through the flutter of the city.

Beer is free to soldiers,
Bubbles on wind-parched lips,
Moistens easy kisses
Lavished on the liberators.

Beer is free to soldiers
All night in steaming bars,
In halls delirious with dancing
That spill their music into thronging streets.

--All is free to soldiers,
To the weary heroes
Who have bled, and soaked
The whole earth in their sacrificial blood,
Who have with their bare flesh clogged
The crazy wheels of Juggernaut,
Freed the peoples from the dragon that devoured them,
That scorched with greed their pleasant fields and villages,
Their quiet delightful places:

So they of the frock-coats, amid wreaths and flags victorious,
To the crowds in the flaring squares,
And a murmurous applause
Rises like smoke to mingle in the sky
With the crashing of the bells.

But, resounding in the sky,
Louder than the tramp of feet,
Louder than the crash of bells,
Louder than the blare of bands, victorious,
Shrieks the inextinguishable laughter of the gods.

The old houses rock with it,
And wag their great peaked heads,
The old gates shake,
And the pavings ring with it,
As with the iron tramp of old fighters,
As with the clank of heels of the victorious,
By long ages vanquished.
The spouts in the gurgling fountains
Wrinkle their shiny griffin faces,
Splash the rhythm in their ice-fringed basins--
Of the inextinguishable laughter of the gods.

And far up into the inky sky,
Where great trailing clouds stride across the world,
Darkening the spired cities,
And the villages folded in the hollows of hills,
And the shining cincture of railways,
And the pale white twining roads,
Sounds with the stir of quiet monotonous breath
Of men and women stretched out sleeping,
Sounds with the thin wail of pain
Of hurt things huddled in darkness,
Sounds with the victorious racket
Of speeches and soldiers drinking,
Sounds with the silence of the swarming dead--
The inextinguishable laughter of the gods.