WHEN the Millennium comes <br />Only the kings will fight, <br />While the princes beat the drums, <br />And the queens in aprons white, <br />Arnica bottle in hand, <br />Watch their Majesties throw, <br />With a gesture vague and grand, <br />Their crowns at the dodging foe, <br />Poor old obsolete crowns <br />That Time hangs up in a row. <br />When the Millennium comes <br />And the proud steel navies meet, <br />While the furious boiler hums, <br />And the vengeful pistons beat, <br />The sailors will stay on shore <br />And cheer with a polyglot shout <br />The self-fed cannon that roar <br />Till metal has fought it out, <br />But the warm, glad bodies of boys <br />Are not for the waves to flout. <br />When the Millennium comes, <br />Love, the mother of life, <br />Will have worked out all the sums <br />Of our dim industrial strife, <br />And every man shall be lord <br />Of his deed and his dream, and the lore <br />Of war shall be abhorred <br />As a dragon-tale of yore, <br />Myth of the Iron Age, <br />A monster earth breeds no more.<br /><br />Katharine Lee Bates<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/when-the-millennium-comes/
