WASTE

Reluctant, groping fog crept gray and cold

Up from the fields where now the guns were still;

Far off the thundering surge of battle rolled

And darkness brooded on the quiet hill;

Clearly, across the listening night, the shrill

And rhythmic cry of a lonely cricket fell

On ears long deafened by the scream of shot and shell.

And there were two who listened wistfully

To that glad voice, that sad last voice of all,

Who on the morrow after reveille

Would make no answer to the muster call;

Others would eat their mess, others would fall

When the lines formed again into their places,

And soon their marching comrades would forget their faces.

One moaned a little and the other turned

Painfully sidewise, peering up the bare

Shell-furrowed slope. Then, while his deep wound burned,

He crawled, slow inch by weary inch, to where

The boy lay,— young, he thought, and strangely fair.

“You see, I came,” he said. “It was a wrench.

I thought I'd die. Let's have a light here. What! You're French!

“No matter... we'll be going pretty soon...

Dying‘ s a lonesome business at the best,

And when there's nothing but a ghastly moon

And fog for company, I lose my zest.

There's a girl somewhere... well... you know the rest.

I'm glad I came. It's hand in hand now, brother.

I think I laid you here. I wish‘ t had been another.

“I never meant it, and you did n't mean

For me this ugly gash along my side.

Something has pushed us on. Our slate is clean.

And long and long after we two have died

Some learnedest of doctors will decide

What thing it was. But we... we'll never know.

Our business now‘ s to help make next year's harvest grow.

“You've been at school? College de France! You know

Next year I should have heard your Bergson there,—

Greatest since Hegel. Think of Haeckel, though,

At my own Jena! Mighty men they were.

Not mighty enough for what they had to bear.

They read and wrote and taught, but you and I,

How have we profited at last? Well, here we lie.

“If I had known you by the silver Rhine,

That dreamy country where I had my birth,

The land of golden corn and golden wine

And surely, I think, the world's most lovely earth,—

I should have loved you, brother, and known your worth.

But you were born beside the racing Rhone.

Ah, yes, that made the difference. That thing alone.

“We might have fronted this world's stormy weather

Hand clasped in hand and seeing eye to eye.

What was there we could not have done together?

Who dares to say we should have feared to die,

Shoulder to shoulder standing, you and I?

But now you are slain by me, your unknown friend.

I die by your unknowing hand. This... this is the end!

“And all the love that might have been is blown

Far off like clouds that fade across the blue;

The game is over and the night shuts down,

Blotting the little dreams of me and you

And all our hope of all we longed to do.

But courage, comrade! It's not hard to die.

It's not so lonely now. If only we know why!”

The fog-damp folded closer round the hill

And stillness deepened, but the cricket's song

Tore at the heavy hem of silence still —

One small voice left of love in a world of wrong.

A few dim stars looked down. The yelling throng

Of guns had passed beyond the mountain's brow

When once again he spoke, but slowly, faintlier now.

“Something discovered that it did n't need us —

Me in the Fatherland and you in France.

We were less worth than what it took to feed us,

And so life gave us only a little glance.

It's true to say we never had a chance.

It's like this fog, around, above, below.

Reach out your hand to me. Good-night. We'll never know.”

And then they lay so still they seemed asleep,

For death was near and they had little pain.

The midnight did not hear them moan or weep

For life and love and gladness lost in vain

And faces they would never see again,—

Old friends, old lovers. All seemed at a distance.

The minutes crept and crept. They made no strong resistance.

They only lay and looked up at the stars,

Feeling they had not known how fair they were.

I think their hearts were far from those loud wars

As they lay listening to the cricket's chirr

Until it faded to a drowsy blur,

Dwindled, and died, lost in the distant roar

Of waves that plunged and broke on some eternal shore.