Page:Poems, Alan Seeger, 1916.djvu/213

 And you, in the depths of your easy-chair—

What did you do, what did you care?

Did you find the season too cold and damp

To change the counter for the camp?

Were you frightened by fevers in Mexico?

I can t imagine, but this I know—

You are impassioned vastly more

By the news of the daily baseball score

Than to hear that a dozen countrymen

Have perished somewhere in Darien,

That greasers have taken their innocent lives

And robbed their holdings and raped their wives.

Not by rough tongues and ready fists

Can you hope to jilt in the modern lists.

The armies of a littler folk

Shall pass you under the victor's yoke,

Sobeit a nation that trains her sons

To ride their horses and point their guns— Sobeit a people that comprehends

The limit where private pleasure ends

And where their public dues begin,

A people made strong by discipline

Who are willing to give—what you've no mind to—

And understand—what you are blind to—

The things that the individual

Must sacrifice for the good of all.

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