Then the death-light lit our faces, And the death-mist floated red O’er the crimson cratered places Where his outposts crouched in dread.... And we stabbed or clubbed them as they crouched; and shot them as they fled; And floundered, torn and bleeding, Over trenches, through the wire, With the shrapnel-barrage leading To the prey of our desire-- To the men who rose to meet us from the blood-soaked battle-mire; Met them; gave and asked no quarter; But, where we saw the Gray, Plunged the edged steel of slaughter, Stabbed home, and wrenched away.... Till red wrists tired of killing-work, and none were left to slay. Now--while his fresh battalions Moved up to the attack-- Screaming like angry stallions, His shells came charging back, And stamped the ground with thunder-hooves and pawed it spouting-black And breathed down poison-stenches Upon us, leaping past.... Panting, we turned his trenches; And heard--each time we cast From parapet to parados--the scything bullet-blast. Till the whistle told his coming; Till we flung away the pick, Heard our Lewis guns’ crazed drumming, Grabbed our rifles, sighted quick, Fired ... and watched his wounded writhing back from where his dead lay thick. So we laboured--while we lasted: Soaked in rain or parched in sun; Bullet-riddled; fire-blasted; Poisoned: fodder for the gun: So we perished, and our bodies rotted in the ground they won. It heard the song of the First of the Dead, as It couched by the lintel-post; And the coward-soul would have given Its soul to be back with the Red-Steel host.... But Eye peered down; and It quailed at the Eye; and Nakéd Truth said: “Lost.” And Eye went out. But It might not move; for, droned in the dark, It heard The Second Song of the Killer-men--word upon awful word Cleaving the void with a shrill, keen sound like the wings of a pouncing bird. _THE SONG OF THE CRASHING WING_ _Higher than tinselled heaven, Lower than angels dare, Loop to the fray, swoop on their prey, The Killers of the Air._ We scorned the Galilean, We mocked at Kingdom-Come: The old gods knew our pæan-- Our dawn-loud engine-hum: The old red gods of slaughter, The gods before the Jew! We heard their cruel laughter, Shrill round us, as we flew: When, deaf to earth and pity, Blind to the guns beneath, We loosed upon the city Our downward-plunging death. The Sun-God watched our flighting; No Christian priest could tame Our deathly stuttered fighting:-- The whirled drum, spitting flame;