Rhymes of a Red Cross Man

<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0045" id="link2H_4_0045"></SPAN></p> <br/> <h2> My Foe </h2> <p>A Belgian Priest-Soldier Speaks:&mdash;<br/></p> <p><i>GURR!</i> You 'cochon'! Stand and fight!<br/> Show your mettle! Snarl and bite!<br/> Spawn of an accursed race,<br/> Turn and meet me face to face!<br/> Here amid the wreck and rout<br/> Let us grip and have it out!<br/> Here where ruins rock and reel<br/> Let us settle, steel to steel!<br/> Look! Our houses, how they spit<br/> Sparks from brands your friends have lit.<br/> See! Our gutters running red,<br/> Bright with blood your friends have shed.<br/> Hark! Amid your drunken brawl<br/> How our maidens shriek and call.<br/> Why have <i>YOU</i> come here alone,<br/> To this hearth's blood-spattered stone?<br/> Come to ravish, come to loot,<br/> Come to play the ghoulish brute.<br/> Ah, indeed! We well are met,<br/> Bayonet to bayonet.<br/> God! I never killed a man:<br/> Now I'll do the best I can.<br/> Rip you to the evil heart,<br/> Laugh to see the life-blood start.<br/> Bah! You swine! I hate you so.<br/> Show you mercy? No! . . . and no! . . .<br/> <br/> There! I've done it. See! He lies<br/> Death a-staring from his eyes;<br/> Glazing eyeballs, panting breath,<br/> How it's horrible, is Death!<br/> Plucking at his bloody lips<br/> With his trembling finger-tips;<br/> Choking in a dreadful way<br/> As if he would something say<br/> In that uncouth tongue of his. . . .<br/> Oh, how horrible Death is!<br/> <br/> How I wish that he would die!<br/> So unnerved, unmanned am I.<br/> See! His twitching face is white!<br/> See! His bubbling blood is bright.<br/> Why do I not shout with glee?<br/> What strange spell is over me?<br/> There he lies; the fight was fair;<br/> Let me toss my cap in air.<br/> Why am I so silent? Why<br/> Do I pray for him to die?<br/> Where is all my vengeful joy?<br/> Ugh! <i>MY FOE IS BUT A BOY.</i><br/> <br/> I'd a brother of his age<br/> Perished in the war's red rage;<br/> Perished in the Ypres hell:<br/> Oh, I loved my brother well.<br/> And though I be hard and grim,<br/> How it makes me think of him!<br/> He had just such flaxen hair<br/> As the lad that's lying there.<br/> Just such frank blue eyes were his. . . .<br/> God! How horrible war is!<br/> <br/> I have reason to be gay:<br/> There is one less foe to slay.<br/> I have reason to be glad:<br/> Yet&mdash;my foe is such a lad.<br/> So I watch in dull amaze,<br/> See his dying eyes a-glaze,<br/> See his face grow glorified,<br/> See his hands outstretched and wide<br/> To that bit of ruined wall<br/> Where the flames have ceased to crawl,<br/> Where amid the crumbling bricks<br/> Hangs <i>A BLACKENED CRUCIFIX.</i><br/> <br/> Now, oh now I understand.<br/> Quick I press it in his hand,<br/> Close his feeble finger-tips,<br/> Hold it to his faltering lips.<br/> As I watch his welling blood<br/> I would stem it if I could.<br/> God of Pity, let him live!<br/> God of Love, forgive, forgive.<br/> <br/> . . . . .<br/> <br/> His face looked strangely, as he died,<br/> Like that of One they crucified.<br/> And in the pocket of his coat<br/> I found a letter; thus he wrote:<br/> 'The things I've seen! Oh, mother dear,<br/> I'm wondering can God be here?<br/> To-night amid the drunken brawl<br/> I saw a Cross hung on a wall;<br/> I'll seek it now, and there alone<br/> Perhaps I may atone, atone. . . .'<br/> <br/> Ah no! 'Tis I who must atone.<br/> No other saw but God alone;<br/> Yet how can I forget the sight<br/> Of that face so woeful white!<br/> Dead I kissed him as he lay,<br/> Knelt by him and tried to pray;<br/> Left him lying there at rest,<br/> Crucifix upon his breast.<br/> <br/> Not for him the pity be.<br/> Ye who pity, pity me,<br/> Crawling now the ways I trod,<br/> Blood-guilty in sight of God.<br/></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />