Page:Ballads of a Bohemian.djvu/177

Rh “O dearly, dearly avenged you’ll be Or ever a day be sped!”

Now they hold that we are the best of the best, And each of our men may wear, Like a gash of crimson across his chest, As one fierce-proved in the battle-test, The blood-red ''Fourragère.

For each as he leaps to the top can see, Like an etching of blood on his brain, A wife or a mother lashed to a tree, With two black holes where her breasts should be, Left to rot in the rain.

So we fight like fiends, and of us they say That we neither yield nor spare. Oh, we have the bitterest debt to pay…. Have we paid it?–Look–how we wear to-day Like a trophy, gallant and proud and gay. Our blood-red ''Fourragère.