SOLDIER: TWENTIETH CENTURY

I love you, great new Titan!

Am I not you?

Napoleon and Cæsar

Out of you grew.

Out of unthinkable torture,

Eyes kissed by death,

Won back to the world again,

Lost and won in a breath,

Cruel men are made immortal.

Out of your pain born,

They have stolen the sun’s power

With their feet on your shoulders worn.

Let them shrink from your girth,

That has outgrown the pallid days

When you slept like Circe’s swine

Or a word in the brain’s ways.