Page:Fifes and Drums, Poems of America at War, Vigilantes, 1917.djvu/124

118

He shouted to his men as he went down,

"Never fall back! It is my last command!"

That was one soldier's death. You who can sneer

(God pardon you!) at him and at his like,

Walking so proudly in your nobler ways—

Are you as faithful to humanity

As he to France? Do the stern tests of peace

Awake the God in you, as war in him?

If it were so—there were an end of war.

Amelia Josephine Burr.