Gods, so long thought dead,
Flap their wings overhead,
Hover — a war-cloud!
Moloch and Astaroth, Loki and Siva,
Eblis, Asmodeus; famine and fever —
Grendel, the low-browed!
Singhalese demons, Hebrew and Arabic,
Ogre and goblin and vampire and ghoul,
From forest and mountain and graveyard and pool
Greedy or plethoric!
Swooping and darting,
Thronging or parting,
These make the war-cloud:
Diti and Belial, Nyang and Miru,
African devils, South Sea, and Hindu.
These bring the war-shroud:
Persian and Saxon fiends, Norse, Madagascan,
Reeri from Ceylon, Typhaon, Azazel,
Beelzebub, Biam (devils from every hell),—
The fire-fiend Ahriman!
Quicken once more, when we
Lapse into savagery,
Hunger-demons and spirits of darkness, demons of flame and of flood,
Storm-gods, demons of plague and of madness, barrenness, and blood;
Demons that devour men’s food, with those that steal men’s breath,
Bahman, Abaddon, Samaël, with Kali, goddess of death.
From: California Club, War Poems 1898, 1898, The Murdock Press: San Francisco, pp. 22-23.
(https://archive.org/details/warpoems00compgoog/)
Date: 1898
By: Marrion Wilcox (1858-1926)
