Page:Ballads of a Bohemian.djvu/208

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206
LES GRANDS MUTILES

A cursing devil of fang and claw
When the rest were on the run?
Your eyes aflame with the battle-hate.…
As you sit in the family pew,
And I see you rising to pass the plate,
I ask: Old Brown, was it you?


“Was it me and you? Was it you and me?
(Is that grammar, or is it not?)
Who groveled in filth and misery,
Who gloried and groused and fought?
Which is the wrong and which is the right?
Which is the false and the true?
The man of peace or the man of fight?
Which is the me and the you?”

V

LES GRANDS MUTILES

I saw three wounded of the war:
And the first had lost his eyes;
And the second went on wheels and had
No legs below the thighs;
And the face of the third was featureless,
And his mouth ran cornerwise.
So I made a rhyme about each one,
And this is how my fancies run.