Page:Canadian poems of the great war.djvu/232

 A. C. Stewart

While the stricken nations quail Groping dumbly in the gale,

And bow their sacrificial heads against the iron hail. Lo ! my doom is but begun,

My commands shall be obeyed, They shall render Sire and Son

To the gods their fools have made. They shall welter in the shambles till they cease to be

afraid, And, choked with blood, repudiate the idols whom they

prayed.

I am the Shell !

The prophetic, analytic, the iconoclastic Shell, The smiting Shell !

I m the Shell,

The cynic Shell !

With my weird and demon s breath Breeding millionaires from Death, And crowning skulking cowards with bold Valour s

stolen wreath, With my ghoulish ghastly art,

While the blood of Courage flows Clotting from the hero s heart,

I transmute it to a rose, In the commercial buttonhole, how jauntily it blows!

I have fattened up the lean, Dignified the base and mean, Made a Magnate of the Mucker, changed the Harlot to

a Queen ; I have swallowed up the brave

With the chivalrous and good, Left the Poltroon and the Knave,

As a curse to Womanhood,

To submerge the high heroic with Degeneracy s brood, While my steel-starred lightnings slay, Fatuous mongerers of words,

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