White flabbiness goes brown and lean, Dumpling arms are now brass bars, They've learnt to suffer and live clean, And to think below the stars. They've steeled a tender, girlish heart, Tempered it with a man's pride, Learning to play the butcher's part Though the woman screams inside -- Learning to leap the parapet, Face the open, rush, and then To stab with the stark bayonet, Side by side with fighting men. On Achi Baba's rock their bones Whiten, and on Flanders' plain, But of their travailings and groans Poetry is born again. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DOROTHY'S DOWER by PHOEBE CARY THE VALSE by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE by RUDYARD KIPLING BRUCE: INTRODUCTION by JOHN BARBOUR THE TREE by BJORNSTJERNE MARTINIUS BJORNSON LETTER TO A POET by DOROTHY RANDOLPH BYARD LOCHIEL'S WARNING by THOMAS CAMPBELL |