Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/602

 In the tinselled puppet-show of kings That, when they talked of war, they thought Of sawdust, not of blood;

Not of the crimson tempest Where the shattered city falls: They thought, behind their varnished doors, Of diplomats, ambassadors, Budgets, and loans and boundary-lines, Coercions and re-calls.

The Charge

''Slaughter! Slaughter! Slaughter!'' The cold machines whirred on. And strange things crawled amongst the wheat With entrails dragging round their feet, And over the foul red shambles A fearful sunlight shone

The maxims cracked like cattle-whips Above the struggling hordes. They rolled and plunged and writhed like snakes In the trampled wheat and the blackthorn brakes, And the lightnings leapt among them Like clashing crimson swords.

The rifles flogged their wallowing herds, Flogged them down to die. Down on their slain the slayers lay, And the shrapnel thrashed them into the clay, And tossed their limbs like tattered birds Thro' a red volcanic sky.