Classic Poem

They swept like avengers and like destroyers
Into the battle:
And now the latter dream of the Earth,
The dream of gods that love and build,
Passed away from the bodies of men like fumes of wine,
And left the naked white bodies as they were in the Age of Stone.

The most terrible of animals were these men:
Their fangs were lengthened into swords,
And their claws into spears:
They were as sure a thrust of the Earth as hurricane and waterspout:
All was destroyed before them …

And as they came on the foe, speech was forgotten,
And all Gods blasted:
The youth tasted the entrails of vision,
With primal thirst for the blood of a man,
And hunter's lust to kill.

Screaming they closed upon each other:
And he who was pierced, felt no wound,
And he whose leg was loosed, crawled on the other,
And the dead fell with cemented clutch on the victor,
And all rolled together in red and whirling ruin.