Then a Girl-Guide looked in to say, "Will Captain Croesus come this way?"
When I'm among a blaze of lights, With tawdry music and cigars And women dawdling through delights, And officers at cocktail bars,-- Sometimes I think of garden nights And elm trees nodding at the stars.
I dream of a small firelit room With yellow candles burning straight, And glowing pictures in the gloom, And kindly books that hold me late. Of things like these I love to think When I can never be alone: Then some one says, "Another drink?"-- And turns my living heart to stone.
To these I turn, in these I trust; Brother Lead and Sister Steel. To his blind power I make appeal; I guard her beauty clean from rust.
He spins and burns and loves the air, And splits a skull to win my praise; But up the nobly marching days She glitters naked, cold and fair.
Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this; That in good fury he may feel The body where he sets his heel Quail from your downward darting kiss.
He primmed his loose red mouth, and leaned his head Against a sorrowing angel's breast, and said: "You'd think so much bereavement would have made Unusual big demands upon my trade. The War comes cruel hard on some poor folk-- Unless the fighting stops I'll soon be broke."
He eyed the Cemetery across the road-- "There's scores of bodies out abroad, this while, That should be here by rights; they little know'd How they'd get buried in such wretched style."
I told him, with a sympathetic grin, That Germans boil dead soldiers down for fat; And he was horrified. "What shameful sin! O sir, that Christian men should come to that!"
Propped on a stick he viewed the August weald; Squat orchard trees and oasts with painted cowls; A homely, tangled hedge, a corn-stooked field, With sound of barking dogs and farmyard fowls.
And he'd come home again to find it more Desirable than ever it was before. How right it seemed that he should reach the span Of comfortable years allowed to man!
Splendid to eat and sleep and choose a wife, Safe with his wound, a citizen of life. He hobbled blithely through the garden gate, And thought; "Thank God they had to amputate!"
_A lady watches from the crowd, Enthusiastic, flushed, and proud._
"Oh! there's Sir Henry Dudster! Such a splendid leader! How pleased he looks! What rows of ribbons on his tunic! Such dignity.... Saluting.... (_Wave your flag ... now, Freda!_)... Yes, dear, I saw a Prussian General once,--at Munich.