THE chapel at the crossways bore no scar, Nor near had whining covey of shells yet pounced, The calm saints in the chapel knew no war, No meaning there the horizon's roars announced; We halted, and were glad; the country lay After our marching like a sabbath day. Round the still quadrangle of the great farm The company soon had settled their new home; The cherry-boughs were beckoning every arm, The stream ran wrinkling by with playful foam, And when the guard was at the gateway set, Surrounding pastoral sweetly stole their wit. So out upon the road, gamekeeper-like, The cowman now turned warrior measured out His up-and-down sans cursed bundook and spike, Under his arm a cudgel brown and stout; An air of comfort and kind ownership, A philosophic smile upon his lip. For it seemed sin to soil the harmonious air With the parade of weapons built to kill. But now a flagged car came ill-omened there. The crimson-mottled monarch, shocked and shrill, Sent our poor sentry scampering for his gun, Made him once more "the terror of the Hun." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HOMAGE TO SEXTUS PROPERTIUS: 5 by EZRA POUND THE RELIEF OF LUCKNOW (SEPTEMBER 25, 1857) by ROBERT TRAILL SPENCE LOWELL FRAGMENTS OF A LOST GNOSTIC POEM OF THE 12TH CENTURY by HERMAN MELVILLE PSALM OF THOSE WHO GO FORTH BEFORE DAYLIGHT by CARL SANDBURG THE PACIFIC RAILWAY by C. R. BALLARD THE SHRIMP, SELS by MOSES BROWNE LIFE by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING |