From Amelia Josephine Burr’s book of poems, “The Silver Trumpet.” Published and copyright, 1918, by George H. Doran Company, New York. Special permission to reproduce in this book.
THEY knew they were fighting our war. As the months grew to years
Their men and their women had watched through their blood and their tears
For a sign that we knew, we who could not have come to be free
Without France, long ago. And at last from the threatening sea
The stars of our strength on the eyes of their weariness rose
And he stood among them, the sorrow-strong hero we chose
To carry our flag to the tomb of that Frenchman whose name
A man of our country could once more pronounce without shame.
What crown of rich words would he set for all time on this day?
The past and the future were listening what he would say—
Only this, from the white-flaming heart of a passion austere,
Only this—ah, but France understood! “Lafayette, we are here.”
TRAINS
LIEUT. JOHN PIERRE ROCHE
From Lieutenant Roche’s book of poems, “Rimes in Olive Drab.” Robert M. McBride & Company, Publishers, New York. Copyright, 1918. Special permission to insert in this book.
Lieutenant Roche has deftly caught and preserved in words the strange vision of unannounced trains that flashed now and then past towns and villages bearing American troops from unknown camps to unknown ports of embarkation—the flash of faces of men about whom it was known only that they came from the shops and fields of home and were going across the seas to fight somewhere, for those who stood and gazed as they whirled by. The mystery, the roar of wheels, the eddying dust and the silence that followed infuse these lines with picture and sound that will stay in the minds of any who saw such trains go hurrying away.
OVER thousands of miles
Of shining steel rails,
Past green and red semaphores
And unheeding flagmen,
Trains are running,
Trains, trains, trains.
Rattling through tunnels
And clicking by way stations,
Curving through hills, past timber,
Out into the open places,
Flashing past silos and barns
And whole villages,
Until finally they echo
Against the squat factories
That line the approach to the cities.
Trains, trains, trains
With the fire boxes wide open,
Giant Moguls and old-time Baldwins
And oil-burners on the Southern Pacific,
Fire boxes wide open
Flaring against the night,
Like a tremendous watch fire
Where the sentries cluster at their post.
Trains, trains, trains
Serpentine strings of cars
Loaded with boys and men—
The legion of the ten-year span
To whom has been given the task
Of seeking the Great Adventure.
Swaying through the North and South,
And East and West,
Freighted with the Willing
And the Unwilling;
Packed with the Thinking
And the Unthinking,
Pushing on to the Unknown
Away from the shelter and security
Of the accustomed into the Great Adventure.