Page:A treasury of war poetry, British and American poems of the world war, 1914-1919.djvu/63

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North and east, a monster wall,

The mighty Hun ranks lay,

With fort on fort, and iron-ringed trench,

Menacing, grim and gray.

And south and west, like a serpent of fire,

Serried the British lines,

And in between, the dying and dead,

And the stench of blood, and the trampled mud,

On the fair, sweet Belgian vines.

And far to the eastward, harnessed and taut,

Like a scimitar, shining and keen,

Gleaming out of that ominous gloom,

Old France's hosts were seen.

When out of the grim Hun lines one night,

There rolled a sinister smoke—

A strange, weird cloud, like a pale, green shroud,

And death lurked in its cloak.

On a fiend-like wind it curled along

Over the brave French ranks,

Like a monster tree its vapours spread,

In hideous, burning banks

Of poisonous fumes that scorched the night

With their sulphurous demon danks.

And men went mad with horror, and fled

From that terrible, strangling death,

That seemed to sear both body and soul

With its baleful, flaming breath.

Till even the little dark men of the south,

Who feared neither God nor man,

Those fierce, wild fighters of Afric's steppes,

Broke their battalions and ran:—

Ran as they never had run before,

Gasping, and fainting for breath;

For they knew 'twas no human foe that slew;

And that hideous smoke meant death.