More Songs by the Fighting Men
Wanders the spirit of death;
And e'en in the burning noon is an icy breath
And the red of the west is to me like the redness of blood.
The village is still as the heat,
From the ruined houses start
The rats across the street.—
There is never another sound,
For the guns are silent to-day,
And the endless lines of men that are bound
For the place of death and the nameless mound
Have taken another way.
At the end of the ruined street
Roodless the church yet stands
To the God men praise with their lips
While they mock Him with their hands;
With hands that have scrawled for sport
Their jests on the altar-stone,
And their ribald words on the lips of Christ,
The marred Christ hanging alone.
Who has measured pain,
And who has a plumb for that sea
Where the soul shall know again
Its own immensity?
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