My Foe

A Belgian Priest-Soldier Speaks: -      GURR! You 'cochon'! Stand and fight!      Show your mettle! Snarl and bite!      Spawn of an accursed race,      Turn and meet me face to face!      Here amid the wreck and rout      Let us grip and have it out!      Here where ruins rock and reel      Let us settle, steel to steel!      Look! Our houses, how they spit      Sparks from brands your friends have lit.      See! Our gutters running red,      Bright with blood your friends have shed.      Hark! Amid your drunken brawl      How our maidens shriek and call.      Why have YOU come here alone,      To this hearth's blood-spattered stone?      Come to ravish, come to loot,      Come to play the ghoulish brute.      Ah, indeed! We well are met,      Bayonet to bayonet.      God! I never killed a man:      Now I'll do the best I can.      Rip you to the evil heart,      Laugh to see the life-blood start.      Bah! You swine! I hate you so.      Show you mercy? No! . . . and no! . . .      There! I've done it. See! He lies      Death a-staring from his eyes;      Glazing eyeballs, panting breath,      How it's horrible, is Death!      Plucking at his bloody lips      With his trembling finger-tips;      Choking in a dreadful way      As if he would something say      In that uncouth tongue of his. . . .      Oh, how horrible Death is!      How I wish that he would die!      So unnerved, unmanned am I.      See! His twitching face is white!      See! His bubbling blood is bright.      Why do I not shout with glee?      What strange spell is over me?      There he lies; the fight was fair;      Let me toss my cap in air.      Why am I so silent? Why      Do I pray for him to die?      Where is all my vengeful joy?      Ugh! MY FOE IS BUT A BOY.      I'd a brother of his age      Perished in the war's red rage;      Perished in the Ypres hell:      Oh, I loved my brother well.      And though I be hard and grim,      How it makes me think of him!      He had just such flaxen hair      As the lad that's lying there.      Just such frank blue eyes were his. . . .      God! How horrible war is!      I have reason to be gay:      There is one less foe to slay.      I have reason to be glad:      Yet - my foe is such a lad.      So I watch in dull amaze,      See his dying eyes a-glaze,      See his face grow glorified,      See his hands outstretched and wide      To that bit of ruined wall      Where the flames have ceased to crawl,      Where amid the crumbling bricks      Hangs A BLACKENED CRUCIFIX.      Now, oh now I understand.      Quick I press it in his hand,      Close his feeble finger-tips,      Hold it to his faltering lips.      As I watch his welling blood      I would stem it if I could.      God of Pity, let him live!      God of Love, forgive, forgive.         . . . . .      His face looked strangely, as he died,      Like that of One they crucified.      And in the pocket of his coat      I found a letter; thus he wrote:      'The things I've seen! Oh, mother dear,      I'm wondering can God be here?      To-night amid the drunken brawl      I saw a Cross hung on a wall;      I'll seek it now, and there alone      Perhaps I may atone, atone. . . .'      Ah no! 'Tis I who must atone.      No other saw but God alone;      Yet how can I forget the sight      Of that face so woeful white!      Dead I kissed him as he lay,      Knelt by him and tried to pray;      Left him lying there at rest,      Crucifix upon his breast.      Not for him the pity be.      Ye who pity, pity me,      Crawling now the ways I trod,      Blood-guilty in sight of God.