THE JUDGEMENT
OF VALHALLA

GILBERT FRANKAU

NEW YORK
FEDERAL PRINTING COMPANY
1918

The Judgement of Valhalla

By GILBERT FRANKAU

THE DESERTER

“I’m sorry I done it, Major.”

We bandaged the livid face;

And led him out, ere the wan sun rose,

To die his death of disgrace.

The bolt-heads locked to the cartridge;

The rifles steadied to rest,

As cold stock nestled at colder cheek

And foresight lined on the breast.

“Fire!” called the Sergeant-Major.

The muzzles flamed as he spoke:

And the shameless soul of a nameless man

Went up in the cordite-smoke.

THE EYE AND THE TRUTH

Up from the fret of the earth-world, through the Seven Circles of Flame,

With the seven holes in Its tunic for sign of the death-in-shame,

To the little gate of Valhalla the coward-spirit came.

Cold, It crouched in the man-strong wind that sweeps Valhalla’s floor;

Weak, It pawed and scratched on the wood; and howled, like a dog, at the Door

Which is shut to the souls who are sped in shame, for ever and evermore:

For It snuffed the Meat of the Banquet-boards where the Threefold Killers sit,

Where the Free Beer foams to the tankard-rim, and the Endless Smokes are lit....

And It saw the Nakéd Eye come out above the lintel-slit.

And now It quailed at Nakéd Eye which judges the naked dead;

And now It snarled at Nakéd Truth that broodeth overhead;

And now It looked to the earth below where the gun-flames flickered red.

It muttered words It had learned on earth, the words of a black-coat priest

Who had bade It pray to a pulpit god—but ever Eye’s Wrath increased;

And It knew that Its words were empty words, and It whined like a homeless beast:

Till, black above the lintel-slit, the Nakéd Eye went out;

Till, loud across the Killer-Feasts, It heard the Killer-Shout—

The three-fold song of them that slew, and died ... and had no doubt.

THE SONG OF THE RED-EDGED STEEL

Below your black priest’s heaven,

Above his tinselled hell,

Beyond the Circles Seven,

The Red-Steel Killers dwell—

The men who drave, to blade-ring home, behind the marching shell.

We knew not good nor evil,

Save only right of blade;

Yet neither god nor devil

Could hold us from our trade,

When once we watched the barrage lift, and splendidly afraid

Came scrambling out of cover,

And staggered up the hill....

The bullets whistled over;

Our sudden dead lay still;

And the mad machine-gun chatter drove us fighting-wild to kill.

Then the death-light lit our faces,

And the death-mist floated red

O’er the crimson cratered places

Where his outposts crouched in dread....

And we stabbed or clubbed them as they crouched; and shot them as they fled;

And floundered, torn and bleeding,

Over trenches, through the wire,

With the shrapnel-barrage leading

To the prey of our desire—

To the men who rose to meet us from the blood-soaked battle-mire;

Met them; gave and asked no quarter;

But, where we saw the Gray,

Plunged the edged steel of slaughter,

Stabbed home, and wrenched away....

Till red wrists tired of killing-work, and none were left to slay.

Now—while his fresh battalions

Moved up to the attack—

Screaming like angry stallions,

His shells came charging back,

And stamped the ground with thunder-hooves and pawed it spouting-black

And breathed down poison-stenches

Upon us, leaping past....

Panting, we turned his trenches;

And heard—each time we cast

From parapet to parados—the scything bullet-blast.

Till the whistle told his coming;

Till we flung away the pick,

Heard our Lewis guns’ crazed drumming,

Grabbed our rifles, sighted quick,

Fired ... and watched his wounded writhing back from where his dead lay thick.

So we laboured—while we lasted:

Soaked in rain or parched in sun;

Bullet-riddled; fire-blasted;

Poisoned: fodder for the gun:

So we perished, and our bodies rotted in the ground they won.

It heard the song of the First of the Dead, as It couched by the lintel-post;

And the coward-soul would have given Its soul to be back with the Red-Steel host....

But Eye peered down; and It quailed at the Eye; and Nakéd Truth said: “Lost.”

And Eye went out. But It might not move; for, droned in the dark, It heard

The Second Song of the Killer-men—word upon awful word

Cleaving the void with a shrill, keen sound like the wings of a pouncing bird.

THE SONG OF THE CRASHING WING

Higher than tinselled heaven,

Lower than angels dare,

Loop to the fray, swoop on their prey,

The Killers of the Air.

We scorned the Galilean,

We mocked at Kingdom-Come:

The old gods knew our pæan—

Our dawn-loud engine-hum:

The old red gods of slaughter,

The gods before the Jew!

We heard their cruel laughter,

Shrill round us, as we flew:

When, deaf to earth and pity,

Blind to the guns beneath,

We loosed upon the city

Our downward-plunging death.

The Sun-God watched our flighting;

No Christian priest could tame

Our deathly stuttered fighting:—

The whirled drum, spitting flame;

The roar, of blades behind her;

The banking plane up-tossed;

The swerve that sought to blind her;

Masked faces, glimpsed and lost;

The joy-stick wrenched to guide her;

The swift and saving zoom,

What time the shape beside her

Went spinning to its doom.

No angel-wings might follow

Where, poised behind the fray,

We spied our Lord Apollo

Stoop down to mark his prey—

The hidden counter-forces;

The guns upon the road;

The tethered transport-horses,

Stampeding, as we showed—

Dun hawks of death, loud-roaring—

A moment to their eyes:

And slew; and passed far-soaring;

And dwindled up the skies.

But e’en Apollo’s pinions

Had faltered where we ran,

Low through his veiled dominions,

To lead the charging van!

The tree-tops slathered under;

The Red-Steel Killers knew,

Hard overhead, the thunder

And backwash of her screw;

The blurred clouds raced above her;

The blurred fields streaked below,

Where waited, crouched to cover,

The foremost of our foe;

Banking, we saw his furrows

Leap at us, open wide:

Hell-raked the man-packed burrows;

And crashed—and crashing, died.

It heard the song of the Dead in Air, as It huddled against the gate;

And once again the Eye peered down—red-rimmed with scorn and hate

For the shameless soul of the nameless one who had neither foe nor mate.

And Eye was shut. But Nakéd Truth bent down to mock the Thing:—

“Thou hast heard the Song of the Red-edged Steel, and the Song of the Crashing Wing:

Shall the word of a black-coat priest avail at Valhalla’s harvesting?

Shalt thou pass free to the Seven Halls—whose life in shame was sped?”

And Truth was dumb. But the brooding word still echoed overhead,

As roaring down the void outburst the last loud song of the dead.

THE SONG OF THE GUNNER-DEAD

In Thor’s own red Valhalla,

Which priest may not unbar;

But only Nakéd Truth and Eye,

Last arbiters of War;

Feast, by stark right of courage,

The Killers from Afar.

We put no trust in heaven,

We had no fear of hell;

But lined, and ranged, and timed to clock,

Our barrage-curtains fell,

When guns gave tongue and breech-blocks swung

And palms rammed home the shell.

The Red-Steel ranks edged forward,

And vanished in our smoke;

Back from his churning craters,

The Gray Man reeled and broke;

While, fast as sweat could lay and set,

Our rocking muzzles spoke.

We blew him from the village;

We chased him through the wood:

Till, tiny on the crest-line

Where once his trenches stood,

We watched the wag of sending flag

That told our work was good:

Till, red behind the branches,

The death-sun sank to blood;

And the Red-Steel Killers rested....

But we, by swamp and flood,

Through mirk and night—his shells for light—

Blaspheming, choked with mud,

Roped to the tilting axles,

Man-handled up the crest;

And wrenched our plunging gun-teams

Foam-flecked from jowl to breast,

Downwards, and on, where trench-lights shone—

For we, we might not rest!

Shell-deafened; soaked and sleepless;

Short-handed; under fire;

Days upon nights unending,

We wrought, and dared not tire—

With whip and bit from dump to pit,

From pit to trench with wire.

The Killers in the Open,

The Killers down the Wind,

They saw the Gray Man eye to eye—

But we, we fought him blind,

Nor knew whence came the screaming flame

That killed us, miles behind.

Yet, when the triple rockets

Flew skyward, blazed and paled,

For sign the lines were broken;

When the Red Steel naught availed;

When, through the smoke, on shield and spoke

His rifle bullets hailed;

When we waited, dazed and hopeless,

Till the layer’s eye could trace

Helmets, bobbing just above us

Like mad jockeys in a race....

Then—loaded, laid, and unafraid,

We met him face to face;

Jerked the trigger; felt the trunnions

Rock and quiver; saw the flail

Of our zero-fuses blast him;

Saw his gapping ranks turn tail;

Heard the charging-cheer behind us ...

And dropped dead across the trail.

VALHALLA’S VERDICT

It heard the Song of the Gunner-Dead die out to a sullen roar:

But Nakéd Truth said never a word; and Eye peered down no more.

For Eye had seen; and Truth had judged ... and It might not pass the Door!

And now, like a dog in the dark, It shrank from the voice of a man It knew:—

“There are empty seats at the Banquet-board, but there’s never a seat for you;

For they will not drink with a coward soul, the stark red men who slew.

There’s meat and to spare, at the Killer-Feasts where Thor’s swung hammer twirls;

There’s beer and enough, in the Free Canteen where the Endless Smoke upcurls;

There are lips and lips, for the Killer-Men, in the Hall of the Dancing-Girls.

There’s a place for any that passes clean—but for you there’s never a place:

The Endless Smoke would blacken your lips, and the Girls would spit in your face;

And the Beer and the Meat go sour on your guts—for you died the death of disgrace.

We were pals on earth: but by God’s brave Son and the bomb that I reached too late,

I damn the day and I blast the hour when first I called you mate;

And I’d sell my soul for one of my feet, to hack you from the gate—

To hack you hence to the lukewarm hells that the priest-made ovens heat,

Or the faked-pearl heaven of pulpit gods, where the sheep-faced angels bleat

And the halo’s rim is as hard to the head as the gilded floor to the feet.”

It heard the stumps of Its one-time mate go waddling back to the Feast.

And, once and again, It whined for the Meat; ere It slunk, like a tongue-lashed beast,

To the tinselled heaven of pulpit gods and the tinselled hell of their priest.