Shells through the farmhouse roof, where the green moss grew on the shingles;
Shattered the apple-tree now, where the robin would sing at the sunset;
Shall there be song again, in a world given over to devils?
Shattered the stones of the dead, and about them the shapes of the dying;
Boom, boom, boom after boom to the right, to the left, in the centre,
Endless—will it be endless? and how shall the spirit endure it?
What did it mean in the heaven? Ah surely, black lips of the cannon,
Surely you spake in your wrath, and the soul of the world understood you!
Else it were horror indeed, and the blind brute rage of the jungle,
Earth returning to slime, and the hissing and tearing of dragons!