IN THE FRONT-LINE DESKS
LIEUT. ELMER FRANKLIN POWELL
in Adventure Magazine
Permission to reproduce in this book
I TRIED to be a doughboy, but they said my feet were flat
And I’d surely never stand the awful strain.
No chance to even argue that I’d like to bet my hat
I could out walk any tar-heel in the train.
“Awful sorry, but it’s useless,” was the doctor’s mournful wail.
“Your eyesight quite unfits you for the guns.”
Uselessly I tried to tell him that at dropping leaden hail
I could surely decimate a pack of Huns.
Then I hoped for aviation, for my nerve is still in place,
But there wasn’t even half a chance for that.
A stocky young lieutenant said, “You’ll never hold the pace,
For you’ve got a jumpy eyebrow.” Think o’ that!
So they went and made me captain in the Quartermaster Corps,
Where I juggle lists of beans the livelong day.
Trying hard to grin and bear it as the boys march off to war
While I sit and figure up their blasted pay.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN WALKS AT MIDNIGHT
(In Springfield, Illinois)
VACHEL LINDSAY
From Vachel Lindsay’s book entitled “The Congo and Other Poems,” published and copyright, 1914, by The Macmillan Company, New York. Special permission to insert in this book.