Ballads of a Bohemian · Part XVI

Yea, some would be sobbing, and some would pray, And some hurl hateful names; But the best had never a word to say; They turned their twitching faces away, And their eyes were like hot flames.

They passed; then down on his bended knee The Colonel dropped to the Dead: "Poor martyred daughter of France!" said he, "O dearly, dearly avenged you'll be Or ever a day be sped!"

Now they hold that we are the best of the best, And each of our men may wear, Like a gash of crimson across his chest, As one fierce-proved in the battle-test, The blood-red Fourragère.

For each as he leaps to the top can see, Like an etching of blood on his brain, A wife or a mother lashed to a tree, With two black holes where her breasts should be, Left to rot in the rain.

So we fight like fiends, and of us they say That we neither yield nor spare. Oh, we have the bitterest debt to pay. . . . Have we paid it?-- Look--how we wear to-day Like a trophy, gallant and proud and gay, Our blood-red Fourragère.

It is often weary waiting at the little poste de secours. Some of us play solitaire, some read a "sixpenny", some doze or try to talk in bad French to the poilus. Around us is discomfort, dirt and drama.

For my part, I pass the time only too quickly, trying to put into verse the incidents and ideas that come my way. In this way I hope to collect quite a lot of stuff which may some day see itself in print.

Here is one of my efforts:

Jim

Never knew Jim, did you? Our boy Jim? Bless you, there was the likely lad; Supple and straight and long of limb, Clean as a whistle, and just as glad. Always laughing, wasn't he, dad? Joy, pure joy to the heart of him, And, oh, but the soothering ways he had, Jim, our Jim!

But I see him best as a tiny tot, A bonny babe, though it's me that speaks; Laughing there in his little cot, With his sunny hair and his apple cheeks. And my! but the blue, blue eyes he'd got, And just where his wee mouth dimpled dim Such a fairy mark like a beauty spot-- That was Jim.

Oh, the war, the war! How my eyes were wet! But he says: "Don't be sorrowing, mother dear; You never knew me to fail you yet, And I'll be back in a year, a year." 'Twas at Mons he fell, in the first attack; For so they said, and their eyes were dim; But I laughed in their faces: "He'll come back, Will my Jim."

Now, we'd been wedded for twenty year, And Jim was the only one we'd had; So when I whispered in father's ear, He wouldn't believe me--would you, dad? There! I must hurry . . . hear him cry? My new little baby. . . . See! that's him. What are we going to call him? Why, Jim, just Jim.

Jim! For look at him laughing there In the same old way in his tiny cot, With his rosy cheeks and his sunny hair, And look, just look . . . his beauty spot In the selfsame place. . . . Oh, I can't explain, And of course you think it's a mother's whim, But I know, I know it's my boy again, Same wee Jim.

Just come back as he said he would; Come with his love and his heart of glee. Oh, I cried and I cried, but the Lord was good; From the shadow of Death he set Jim free. So I'll have him all over again, you see. Can you wonder my mother-heart's a-brim? Oh, how happy we're going to be! Aren't we, Jim?

II

In Picardy,

January 1915.

The road lies amid a malevolent heath. It seems to lead us right into the clutch of the enemy; for the star-shells, that at first were bursting overhead, gradually encircle us. The fields are strangely sinister; the splintered trees are like giant toothpicks. There is a lisping and a twanging overhead.

As we wait at the door of the dugout that serves as a first-aid dressing station, I gaze up into that mysterious dark, so alive with musical vibrations. Then a small shadow detaches itself from the greater shadow, and a gray-bearded sentry says to me: "You'd better come in out of the bullets."

So I keep under cover, and presently they bring my load. Two men drip with sweat as they carry their comrade. I can see that they all three belong to the Foreign Legion. I think for a moment of Saxon Dane. How strange if some day I should carry him! Half fearfully I look at my passenger, but he is a black man. Such things only happen in fiction.

This is what I have written of the finest troops in the Army of France:

Kelly of the Legion

Now Kelly was no fighter; He loved his pipe and glass; An easygoing blighter, Who lived in Montparnasse. But 'mid the tavern tattle He heard some guinney say: "When France goes forth to battle, The Legion leads the way.

"The scourings of creation, Of every sin and station, The men who've known damnation, Are picked to lead the way."

Well, Kelly joined the Legion; They marched him day and night; They rushed him to the region Where largest loomed the fight. "Behold your mighty mission, Your destiny," said they; "By glorious tradition The Legion leads the way.

"With tattered banners flying With trail of dead and dying, On! On! All hell defying, The Legion sweeps the way."

With grim, hard-bitten faces, With jests of savage mirth, They swept into their places, The men of iron worth; Their blooded steel was flashing; They swung to face the fray; Then rushing, roaring, crashing, The Legion cleared the way.

The trail they blazed was gory; Few lived to tell the story; Through death they plunged to glory; But, oh, they cleared the way!

Now Kelly lay a-dying, And dimly saw advance, With split new banners flying, The fantassins of France. Then up amid the melee He rose from where he lay; "Come on, me boys," says Kelly, "The Layjun lades the way!"

Aye, while they faltered, doubting (Such flames of doom were spouting), He caught them, thrilled them, shouting: "The Layjun lades the way!"

They saw him slip and stumble, Then stagger on once more; They marked him trip and tumble, A mass of grime and gore; They watched him blindly crawling Amid hell's own affray, And calling, calling, calling: "The Layjun lades the way!"

And even while they wondered, The battle-wrack was sundered; To Victory they thundered, But . . . Kelly led the way.

Still Kelly kept agoing; Berserker-like he ran; His eyes with fury glowing, A lion of a man; His rifle madly swinging, His soul athirst to slay, His slogan ringing, ringing, "The Layjun lades the way!"

Till in a pit death-baited, Where Huns with Maxims waited, He plunged . . . and there, blood-sated, To death he stabbed his way.

Now Kelly was a fellow Who simply loathed a fight: He loved a tavern mellow, Grog hot and pipe alight; I'm sure the Show appalled him, And yet without dismay, When Death and Duty called him, He up and led the way.

So in Valhalla drinking (If heroes meek and shrinking Are suffered there), I'm thinking 'Tis Kelly leads the way.

We have just had one of our men killed, a young sculptor of immense promise.

When one thinks of all the fine work he might have accomplished, it seems a shame. But, after all, to-morrow it may be the turn of any of us. If it should be mine, my chief regret will be for work undone.

Ah! I often think of how I will go back to the Quarter and take up the old life again. How sweet it will all seem. But first I must earn the right. And if ever I do go back, how I will find Bohemia changed! Missing how many a face!

It was in thinking of our lost comrade I wrote the following:

The Three Tommies

That Barret, the painter of pictures, what feeling for color he had! And Fanning, the maker of music, such melodies mirthful and mad! And Harley, the writer of stories, so whimsical, tender and glad!

To hark to their talk in the trenches, high heart unfolding to heart, Of the day when the war would be over, and each would be true to his part, Upbuilding a Palace of Beauty to the wonder and glory of Art . . .

Yon's Barret, the painter of pictures, yon carcass that rots on the wire; His hand with its sensitive cunning is crisped to a cinder with fire; His eyes with their magical vision are bubbles of glutinous mire.

Poor Fanning! He sought to discover the symphonic note of a shell; There are bits of him broken and bloody, to show you the place where he fell; I've reason to fear on his exquisite ear the rats have been banqueting well.

And speaking of Harley, the writer, I fancy I looked on him last, Sprawling and staring and writhing in the roar of the battle blast; Then a mad gun-team crashed over, and scattered his brains as it passed.

Oh, Harley and Fanning and Barret, they were bloody good mates o' mine; Their bodies are empty bottles; Death has guzzled the wine; What's left of them's filth and corruption. . . . Where is the Fire Divine?

I'll tell you. . . . At night in the trenches, as I watch and I do my part, Three radiant spirits I'm seeing, high heart revealing to heart, And they're building a peerless palace to the splendor and triumph of Art.

Yet, alas! for the fame of Barret, the glory he might have trailed! And alas! for the name of Fanning, a star that beaconed and paled, Poor Harley, obscure and forgotten. . . . Well, who shall say that they failed!

No, each did a Something Grander than ever he dreamed to do; And as for the work unfinished, all will be paid their due; The broken ends will be fitted, the balance struck will be true.

So painters, and players, and penmen, I tell you: Do as you please; Let your fame outleap on the trumpets, you'll never rise up to these-- To three grim and gory Tommies, down, down on your bended knees!

Daventry, the sculptor, is buried in a little graveyard near one of our posts. Just now our section of the line is quiet, so I often go and sit there. Stretching myself on a flat stone, I dream for hours.

Silence and solitude! How good the peace of it all seems! Around me the grasses weave a pattern, and half hide the hundreds of little wooden crosses. Here is one with a single name:

AUBREY.

Who was Aubrey I wonder? Then another:

To Our Beloved Comrade.

Then one which has attached to it, in the cheapest of little frames, the crude water-color daub of a child, three purple flowers standing in a yellow vase. Below it, painfully printed, I read:

To My Darling Papa--Thy Little Odette.

And beyond the crosses many fresh graves have been dug. With hungry open mouths they wait. Even now I can hear the guns that are going to feed them. Soon there will be more crosses, and more and more. Then they will cease, and wives and mothers will come here to weep.

Ah! Peace so precious must be bought with blood and tears. Let us honor and bless the men who pay, and envy them the manner of their dying; for not all the jeweled orders on the breasts of the living can vie in glory with the little wooden cross the humblest of these has won. . . .