Page:When the Leaves Come Out (Chaplin 1917).pdf/15

 

Go fight, you fools, your needless, gainless strife
 * And spill each others guts upon the field!

Serve unto death the men you served in life
 * So that their wide dominions may not yield.

Stand by the flag—the lie that still allures—
 * Lay down your lives for land you do not own.

And give unto a war that is not yours
 * Your gory tithe of mangled flesh and bone.

Ah, slaves, you fight your masters' battles well—
 * The reek of rotting carnage fills the air!

Your swollen bodies yield their noisome smell,
 * Sweet incense to the ghouls who sent you there . ..

A feast of mothers' pain is here laid low
 * For swarming insects hovering on high.

Grey rats, red muzzled through the trenches go
 * Where your death-tortured features face the sky.

The maggots riot now on rotting men.
 * The grass is greener than it was before.

But as the dead cannot return again
 * The ones who live must wage another war.

So stagger back, you stupid dupes who've "won",
 * Back to your stricken towns to toil anew,

For there your dismal tasks are still undone,
 * And grim Starvation gropes again for you.

What matters now your flag, your race, the skill
 * Of scattered legions—what has been the gain?

Once more beneath the lash you must distil
 * Your lives to glut a glory wrought of pain.

