Hands off our dead! For all they did forbear To drag them from their graves to point some speech; Less sickening was the gas reek over there, Less deadly was the shrapnel's whirring screech; You cannot guess the uttermost they gave; Those martyrs did not die for chattering daws To loot false inspiration from the grave When mouthing fools turn ghouls to gain applause. SOLDIER-POET. To Francis Fowler Hogan. I think at first like us he did not see The goal to which the screaming eagles flew; For romance lured him, France, and chivalry; But Oh! Before the end he knew, he knew! And gave his first full love to Liberty, And met her face to face one lurid night While the guns boomed their shuddering minstrelsy And all the Argonne glowed with demon light. And Liberty herself came through the wood, And with her dear, boy lover kept the tryst; Clasped in her grand, Greek arms he understood Whose were the fatal lips that he had kissed-- Lips that the soul of Youth has loved from old-- Hot lips of Liberty that kiss men cold. DOOMED. Connigis from Bois de la Jutte, July, 1918. Left to its fate, the little village stands Between the armies trenched on either hill, Raising twin spires like supplicating hands From meadow lands where all lies ghastly still. The lakes of clover ripple to the breeze As from the vineyards glides a rancid breath, Bringing the homelike murmur of the bees, Mixed with a sickening whiff of carrion death. It is the valley of the shadow there, Where death lies ambushed in the tossing flowers Whose very beauty seems to cry, "_Beware!_" For terror haunts its villages and towers. That home where peasants led their blameless life, That thatched, stone cottage is a clever trap With painful wounds and fatal danger rife, Noted with two red circles on the map. Seen through the glass, dead, sleeps the _petite place_. Where white-capped housewives lingered once to chat On market days, or after early mass; Now nothing moves there but the stealthy cat-- The only thing that even dares to stir; It hugs short shadows near the walls at noon, Lashing its tail to hear an airplane purr, Circling about a peering, fat balloon. The houses gleam too bright, their limelight glare, Pure sunlight though it be, is filled with gloom; They are too white, too garnished and too bare-- They are too much like walls about a tomb. The windows stare beside each gaping door, Where once in gingham apron and a shawl, In days now passed away forevermore, Some little mother sat and nursed her doll. Sepulchral silence and a lonely dread And desolation's calm have settled down, Making brief peace there for the rigid dead-- _Tonight the shells will burst upon the town!_ WHITE LIGHT.