Page:Poems of the Great War - Cunliffe.djvu/73

 Wlien out of the grim Hun lines one night,

There rolled a sinister smoke ; — A strange, weird cloud, like a pale, green shroud,

And death lurked in its cloak.

On a fiend-like wind it curled along

Over the brave French ranks, Like a monster tree its vapors spread.

In hideous, burning banks Of poisonous fumes that scorched the night

With their sulphurous demon danks.

And men went mad with horror, and fled From that terrible strangling death.

That seemed to sear both bodv and soul With its baleful, flaming breath.

Till even the little dark men of the south,

Who feared neither God nor man. Those fierce, wild fighters of Afric's steppes,

Broke their battalions and ran ; —

Ran as they never had run before,

Gasping, and fainting for breath ; For they knew 'twas no human foe that slew ;

And that hideous smoke meant death.

Then red in the reek of that evil cloud, The llun swept over the plain ;

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