href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@40379@[email protected]#captain-blankburg." class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">Captain Blankburg
Little War Mothers
Interrupted Chow
S. O. S.
The Gas-Proof Mule
Infantry of the World War
The Flowers of France
A First-Class Private
Birds of Battle
Only for You
Cooties
Old Fusee
The Colors of Blighty
When Nurse Comes in
Charlie Chaplin in Blighty
Two Worlds
Embarkation Home
The Statue of Liberty

PART II—PRE-WAR POEMS

To France—1917
The Pacifist
Battle Hymn of ’17

PART III—OTHER VERSES

My Sapphire
The Twins
On Sending My Book to an English Friend
Immortal Keats
To a Little Girl
God
The Golden Day
    Notes

MY COMRADES IN THE RANKS.

You chose no easy Service,
    No safe job, friends of mine,
But the mud of the shell-torn, trenches
    And the foremost battle-line.
No camouflage patriotism—
    Though you had from a wealth to choose
But the wicked work of No Man’s Land,
    Filling a man’s-size shoes.

You didn’t say you wouldn’t play
    If you got no shoulder bars—
You even placed your Country
    Above a general’s stars:
For shocking, very shocking,
    You didn’t give a damn
About your “social status,”
    When you fought for Uncle Sam.

Friends of mine, friends of mine,
    I’ve shared your toil and tears—
Your dangers and your little woes,
    When days were turned to years.
I may not make them understand
    The things that you have done,
But God bless you and God keep you—
    Every blessed mother’s son.

PART I. TRENCH BALLADS.

TRENCHES.

Trenches dripping, wet and cold—
    Trenches hot and dry—
Long, drab, endless trenches
    Stretching far and nigh.

Zigzag, fretted, running sere
    From the cold North Sea,
’Cross the muddy Flanders plain
    And vales of Picardy.

Through the fields of new, green wheat
    Filled with poppies red,
While abandoned plow-shares show
    Whence the peasants fled.

Past the great cathedral towns,
    Where each gorgeous spire
Torn and tottering, slowly wilts
    ‘Neath the Vandals’ ire.

Hiding in the shadows
    Of the hills of French Lorraine,
And bending south through rugged heights
    To the land of sun again.

Trenches, endless trenches,
    Shod with high desire—
All that man holds more than life,
    And touched with patriot fire.

Trenches, endless trenches,
    Where tightening draws the cord
’Round the throat of brutal Kultur,
    And its red and dripping sword.

Trenches, endless trenches,
    Bleached and choked with rain,
Could ye speak what tales ye’d tell
    Of honor, death and pain.

Could ye speak, what tales ye’d tell
    Of shame and golden worth,
To the glory and damnation