_The Nation._ _Percy MacKaye_ THE DRUM There’s a rhythm down the road where the elms overarch Of the drum, of the drum, There’s a glint through the green, there’s a column on the march, Here they come, here they come, To the flat resounding clank they are tramping rank on rank, And the bayonet flashes ripple from the flank to the flank. “I am rhythm, marching rhythm,” says the drum. “No aid am I desiring of the loud brazen choiring, “Of bugle or of trumpet the lilt and the lyring, “I’m the slow dogged rhythm, unending, untiring, “I am rhythm, marching rhythm,” says the drum. “I am rhythm, dogged rhythm, and the plodders feel me with ’em, “I’m the two miles an hour that is empire, that is power, “I’m the slow resistless crawl in the dust-cloud’s choking pall, “I’m the marching days that run from the dawn to set of sun, “I’m the rifle and the kit and the dragging weight of it, “I’m the jaws grimly set and the faces dripping sweat, “I’m the how, why, and when, the Almighty made for men,” Says the rhythm, marching rhythm, of the drum. “Did you call my song ‘barbaric’? Did you mutter, ‘out of date’? “When you hear me with the foemen then your cry will come too late. “Here are hearts a-beating for you, to my pulsing as I come, “To the rhythm, tramping rhythm, “To the rhythm, dogged rhythm, “To the dogged tramping rhythm “Of the drum!”