Classic Poem

You sang the battle —
You, in your slippered ease.
Boldly you called for the muskets to rattle
And bade the bugles lift to the breeze.
Glory you sang — from your couch.
With the strength of a well-filled pouch
You uttered your militant prattle;
You sang the battle.

What was your singing for,
With its twopenny craving for gore,
And its blatant and shoddy glamour
False to the core.
Evil enough is the poisonous clamor —
Why should you yammer
Of war?

Safe in your club or your den
You watch them go past you again;
Other than when you first sung them,
(Thankful that you're not among them)
Soldiers no longer, but men.
Men, and young boys, who were hot with the breath
Of your ardor and noisy ferment.
Look at them now; they are broken and spent. . .
Are you not glad that your doggerel sent
Hundreds of these to their death!

Go now — stop clearing your throat;
Drop those fat hands that smote
Your twanging and trumpery lute.
Go now, and learn from that battered recruit
Of his jubilant sixty days!
Of the terror that crowded the dawn;
Of a fragrant and peace-breathing lawn
Turned to a roaring blaze;
Of frantic drums that blustered and beat
A nightmare retreat;
Of the sickness, the death-dealing stenches;
The stumbling resistance, the thundering flight,
The desperate wait and the unending night
Waist-deep in the water-filled trenches.
Of women ravished in a gust
Of horrible, hasty lust;
And children conceived with the crippling weight
Of frenzied and cancerous hate. . .
Of dusk settling down like a blight,
Screening unnamable hordes;
Searchlights stabbing the night
With blinding and bodiless swords;
Of a sudden welter of cries
And death dropping down from the skies.

What was your singing for?
This music that rose to enamor
The crowd with a clamor
It could not ignore. . .
Go — with your falsetto roar;
Go — with your ready-made glamour.
Why should you stay here to gurgle and stammer
Of war?