Soon he is one with the blinding smoke of it-- Volley and curse and groan: Then he has done with the knightly joke of it-- It’s rending flesh and bone. There are pain-crazed animals a-shrieking there And a warm blood stench that is a-reeking there; He fights like a rat in a corner-- Billy, the Soldier Boy! There he lies now, like a ghoulish score of him, Left on the field for dead: The ground all round is smeared with the gore of him-- Even the leaves are red. The Thing that was Billy lies a-dying there, Writhing and a-twisting and a-crying there; A sickening sun grins down on him-- Billy, the Soldier Boy! Still not quite clear in the poor, wrung heart of him What the fuss was about, See where he lies--or a ghastly part of him-- While life is oozing out: There are loathsome things he sees a-crawling there; There are hoarse-voiced crows he hears a-calling there, Eager for the foul feast spread for them-- Billy, the Soldier Boy! _How much longer, O lord, shall we bear it all? How many more red years? Story it and glory it and share it all, In seas of blood and tears? They are braggart attitudes we’ve worn so long; They are tinsel platitudes we’ve sworn so long-- We who have turned the Devil’s Grindstone, Borne with the hell called War!_ _Smart Set_ _Ruth Comfort Mitchell_ SIX SONNETS (August, 1914) I TO WILLIAM WATSON IN ENGLAND Singer of England’s ire across the sea, Your austere voice, electric from the deep, Speaks our own yearning, and our spirits sweep To Europe’s allied honor.--Painfully, Bowed with a planet’s lonely burden, we Held our hot hearts in leash, but now they leap Their ban, like young hounds belling from their keep, To bait the Teuton wolf of tyranny. What! Would he throw us sops of sugared art And poisoned commerce, snarling: “So! lie still Till I have shown my fangs, and torn the heart Of half the world, and gorged my sanguine fill!”-- Now, England, let him see: Rage as he will, He cannot tear our plighted souls apart. II AMERICAN NEUTRALITY How shall we keep an armed neutrality With our own souls? Our souls belie our lips, That seek to hold our passion in eclipse And hide the wound of our sharp sympathy, Saying: “One’s neighbor differs; he might be Kindled to wrath, were one to wield the whips Of Truth.” Great God! A red Apocalypse Flames on the blinded world: and what do we? _Peace!_ do we cry? Peace is the godlike plan We love and dedicate our children to; Yet England’s cause is ours: The rights of man, Which little Belgium battles for anew, Shall _we_ recant? No!--Being American, Our souls cannot keep neutral and keep true. III PEACE