Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/231

 A. C. Stewart

To formulate a force that makes an infant s toy of

Hell

I m the Shell, The Monstrous Shell !

I m the Shell,

The unsung Shell ! He flounders in futility who apes my thunderous swell.

I have sunk the Poet s drone

To a maudlin monotone ; The Tornadoes of my Threnodies belong to me alone

Stranded in Conception s storm, Thither by the Tempest blown,

Huddled close his shaken form,

He sits crouching like a crone, While explosive Devastation peals its deafening cyclone,

And the Vendors cheap of lies

Stammer in a dazed surprise, Whelmed in dark ferocious horrors, deeper than they

dared devise,

Glutted, choked with red atrocities up to their foolish

eyes

In the blood and murder zone,

I am single and alone ; Imagination faints, and fails to follow where I ve flown.

I am the Shell!

The monstrous Shell Degeneracy s Nightmare never hatched a parallel

To me, the Shell !

I m the High Explosive Shell,

The deafening Shell! My volcanic diapason makes a drowsy hum of hell ;

As I crash across the sky

Charnel houses multiply,

And, out of human semblance blown, the nameless

thousands lie,

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