Page:Fifes and Drums, Poems of America at War, Vigilantes, 1917.djvu/113



you heard the shiver of bodies hurled

Chest on crashing chest,

When thigh-bones snap like pistol shots

And men meet breast to breast?

Have you seen the feet of a maddened horse

Red-wet with the wine of war

And wondered in crushing a comrade's face

What you had killed him for?

Ever the sweep of the wave of men

On the reef of jagged death,

And frozen faces like cockle-shells

Where the breaker billoweth,

The out-flung arms of a down-lipped boy

With his throat shot through—