Page:Poems by Isaac Rosenberg (1922).djvu/107



The darkness crumbles away— It is the same old druid Time as ever. Only a live thing leaps my hand— A queer sardonic rat— As I pull the parapet's poppy To stick behind my ear. Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew Your cosmopolitan sympathies (And God knows what antipathies). Now you have touched this English hand You will do the same to a German— Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure To cross the sleeping green between. It seems you inwardly grin as you pass Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes Less chanced than you for life, Bonds to the whims of murder, Sprawled in the bowels of the earth, The torn fields of France.