TO THE ENEMY, ON HIS ACHIEVEMENT.
Now wanes the third moon since your conquering host
Was to have laid our weakling army low,
And walked through France at will. For that loud boast
What have you got to show?
A bomb that chipped a tower of Nôtre Dame,
Leaving its mark like trippers' knives that scar
The haunts of beauty—that's the best réclame
You have achieved so far.
Paris, that through her humbled Triumph-Arch
Was doomed to see you tread your fathers' tracks—
Paris, your goal, now lies a six days' march
Behind your homing backs.
Pressed to the borders where you lately passed
Bulging with insolence and fat with pride,
You stake your all upon a desperate cast
To stem the gathering tide.
Eastward the Russian draws you to his fold,
Content, on his own ground, to bide his day,
Out of whose toils not many feet of old
Found the returning way.
And still along the seas our watchers keep
Their grip upon your throat with bands of steel,
While that Armada, which should rake the deep,
Skulks in its hole at Kiel.
So stands your record—stay, I cry you grace—
I wronged you. There is Belgium, where your sword
Has bled to death a free and gallant race
Whose life you held in ward;
Where on your trail the smoking land lies bare
Of hearth and homestead, and the dead babe clings
About its murdered mother's breast—ah, there,
Yes, you have done great things!
O. S.