Page:Poetry, a magazine of verse, Volume 7 (October 1915-March 1916).djvu/26

POETRY: A Magazine of Verse :Under the sun Are sixteen million men, Chosen for shining teeth, Sharp eyes, hard legs, And a running of young warm blood in their wrists.


 * And a red juice runs on the green grass;

And a red juice soaks the dark soil. And the sixteen million are killing. . . and killing and killing.


 * I never forget them day or night:

They beat on my head for memory of them; They pound on my heart and I cry back to them To their homes and women, dreams and games.


 * I wake in the night and smell the trenches,

And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines— Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark: Some of them long sleepers for always, Some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always, Fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak, Eating and drinking, toiling on a long job of killing.


 * Sixteen million men.