Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/190

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And I 've quit the straight clean-seeing, I 've attached the label 'cad,'

And I want to go down fighting, want to die with brain blood-mad:

I could spit into their faces when they grin, 'He 's not so bad!'

Drawn-out weeks I 've strained the head-rope, weary months I 've longed to start

For the last and best performance, where for once I 'm given the part

Of a white man—and a little nickel devil through my heart.

Church parade, the padre gave out that damnation 's no man's fate,

That you just report deficient and He never notes you late;

But I 'm not a man to whine for mercy passing through hell's gate.

I don't snivel of repentance when hot tears have run to flood,

For I plucked a blowing rosebud and I trailed it in the mud,

But I 'd like to lave its poor soiled petals with my body's blood.

I would leave the merest speck of gold within the filth-clogged sieve,

Gold that she and God might notice there and, noticing, forgive;

I would show I knew to die although I never learned to live.