Classic Poem

Fair cities tremble as war's æroplane
Crashes cathedrals with the plunging shell;
Now the sweet heavens are turned to skies of hell,
Gomorrah-like, with sheets of fiery rain.
All Europe, agonizing, groans in pain;
The mangled glut the trenches; where they fell
No churchyard waits the dead, — no immortelle, —
Since harvest-fields are heaped with patriot-slain.
There, where the battery swerved in frantic speed,
Lay shrieking wounded, mashed by hoof and wheel;
Mercy for them? — Yes, from the bayonet-steel!
Death, gloating, hovers o'er the battle brunt;
Slaughter en masse! and then, the charnel need, —
Long trains of quick-lime hurried to the front.