Classic and Contemporary Poetry
PICKING SKULLS AT VERDUN, by VINCENT GODFREY BURNS Poet's Biography First Line: A respectable, exceedingly proper paper reports Last Line: Who always see the folly when it is too late! Subject(s): Cruelty; Death; Skulls; Soldiers; Veterans Day; War; World War I; Dead, The; First World War | ||||||||
A respectable, exceedingly proper paper reports With hands in the air and squeamish face and "Horrors!" That folk on the fields of Verdun Are raking the earth for skulls ten years decayed To take them home for souvenirs! A tragedy! says the good editor, That people should be so cruel, so callous, As to dig up out of clay the erstwhile heads Of perished soldier-boys, Heads that have been offered upon the holy altar of war And ought to be left in peace! Well, skulls are as thick as daisies Over that little hill in France Where a million men were slain, Dead Man's Hill they call it, Where for four years Murders were made by the wholesale! And then the thick-skulled newspaper man Lets out his raucous squawk at this late date To protect impersonal skulls That cannot know nor feel forevermore! He who helped to put these dead boys there, Who with his jingo cries for war And his blind glorification of national might Paved way for the havoc of the battle! Now he is chagrined to think That a few skulls have been brought to light, Better to let them rest beneath the all-forgiving earth Than resurrect old sins, old shames, old horrors! Ah! what pitiful irony! The guns that made skulls of tousled heads, The gas that brought to happy hearts decay, The maelstrom that made mincemeat of a continent, These are the blunders of these blind old men Who always see the folly when it is too late! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...D'ANNUNZIO by ERNEST HEMINGWAY 1915: THE TRENCHES by CONRAD AIKEN TO OUR PRESIDENT by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE HORSES by KATHARINE LEE BATES CHILDREN OF THE WAR by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE U-BOAT CREWS by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE RED CROSS NURSE by KATHARINE LEE BATES WAR PROFITS by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE UNCHANGEABLE by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN A HUN by VINCENT GODFREY BURNS |
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