| |
| UNDER our curtain of fire, | |
| Over the clotted clods, | |
| We charged, to be withered, to reel | |
| And despairingly wheel | |
| When the bugles bade us retire | 5 |
| From the terrible odds. | |
| |
| As we ebbed with the battle-tide, | |
| Fingers of red-hot steel | |
| Suddenly closed on my side. | |
| I fell, and began to pray. | 10 |
| I crawled on my hands and lay | |
| Where a shallow crater yawned wide; | |
| Then,—I swooned…. | |
| |
| When I woke, it was yet day. | |
| Fierce was the pain of my wound, | 15 |
| But I saw it was death to stir, | |
| For fifty paces away | |
| Their trenches were. | |
| In torture I prayed for the dark | |
| And the stealthy step of my friend | 20 |
| Who, staunch to the very end, | |
| Would creep to the danger zone | |
| And offer his life as a mark | |
| To save my own. | |
| |
| Night fell. I heard his tread, | 25 |
| Not stealthy, but firm and serene, | |
| As if my comrade’s head | |
| Were lifted far from that scene | |
| Of passion and pain and dread; | |
| As if my comrade’s heart | 30 |
| In carnage took no part; | |
| As if my comrade’s feet | |
| Were set on some radiant street | |
| Such as no darkness might haunt; | |
| As if my comrade’s eyes, | 35 |
| No deluge of flame could surprise, | |
| No death and destruction daunt, | |
| No red-beaked bird dismay, | |
| Nor sight of decay. | |
| |
| Then in the bursting shells’ dim light | 40 |
| I saw he was clad in white. | |
| For a moment I thought that I saw the smock | |
| Of a shepherd in search of his flock. | |
| Alert were the enemy, too, | |
| And their bullets flew | 45 |
| Straight at a mark no bullet could fail; | |
| For the seeker was tall and his robe was bright; | |
| But he did not flee nor quail. | |
| Instead, with unhurrying stride | |
| He came, | 50 |
| And gathering my tall frame, | |
| Like a child, in his arms…. | |
| |
| Again I swooned, | |
| And awoke | |
| From a blissful dream | 55 |
| In a cave by a stream. | |
| My silent comrade had bound my side. | |
| No pain now was mine, but a wish that I spoke,— | |
| A mastering wish to serve this man | |
| Who had ventured through hell my doom to revoke, | 60 |
| As only the truest of comrades can. | |
| I begged him to tell me how best I might aid him, | |
| And urgently prayed him | |
| Never to leave me, whatever betide; | |
| When I saw he was hurt— | 65 |
| Shot through the hands that were clasped in prayer! | |
| Then, as the dark drops gathered there | |
| And fell in the dirt, | |
| The wounds of my friend | |
| Seemed to me such as no man might bear. | 70 |
| Those bullet-holes in the patient hands | |
| Seemed to transcend | |
| All horrors that ever these war-drenched lands | |
| Had known or would know till the mad world’s end. | |
| Then suddenly I was aware | 75 |
| That his feet had been wounded, too; | |
| And, dimming the white of his side, | |
| A dull stain grew. | |
| “You are hurt, White Comrade!” I cried. | |
| His words I already foreknew: | 80 |
| “These are old wounds,” said he, | |
| “But of late they have troubled me.” | |
| |
