Ventures Into Verse / Being various ballads, ballades, rondeaux, triolets, songs, quatrains, odes and roundels, all rescued from the potters' field of old files and here given decent burial

by H. L. Mencken

TO R. K.[^[1]]

Prophet of brawn and bravery!

Bard of the fighting man!

You have made us kneel to a God of Steel,

And to fear his church's ban;

You have taught the song that the bullet sings—

The knell and the crowning ode of kings;

The ne'er denied appeal!