They’re shooting shrapnel o’er the trench—
My child.
And ere the dawn is turning gray—
You mark the very words I say—
There’s going to be hell to pay
(High piled).
RECIPROCITY.
We haven’t been in this large strife
So very long to date,
But we have learned our answer to
The Prussian “Hymn of Hate.”
And we are feeding him for pap,
As plain as A. B. C,
A pretty little ditty known
As “Reciprocity.”
The Hun he planned for War, red War,
By ocean, air and land;
And he is getting oodles of
The same, to date, in hand.
He suddenly sprang poison gas
Upon a valiant foe,
And now he’s getting gas and gas,
And more gas, as you know.
He found new tricks and wrinkles for
This gory battle game,
And now we stoop, no more his dupe,
And beat him at the same.
He drowned our women in the sea—
He ravished where he won—
But these were little things we couldn’t
Copy from the Hun.
His crimson heel lie bade us feel,
His lust and pride and scorn—
Till, echoing in our weary breasts
A righteous hate was born. . . . .
Beware the patient man in wrath,
The olden proverb saith;
And, Spawn of a Kultur nursed in blood—
In blood meet ye your death.
TRUCKS.
Lunging-wild, careening trucks
Plunging through the rain,
Sweeping down the rainbow road
To the sunlit plain.
And echoing back with ponderous roar
Their cargo’s wild refrain.
We’re bowling over the roads of France—
White roads.
We’re twenty gray tracks in a long, long line,
Twisting and rumbling and feeling fine.
And some day we’ll roll to the Watch on the Rhine—
Joyous loads.
But now we’re returning to billets for rest—
Earned repose.
We’ve been in the trenches for many a week.
In rain and in wind and in dugouts that leak.
Till we all are so hoarse we scarcely can speak.
Goodness knows.