A strange, weird cloud, like a pale, green shroud,
And death lurked in its cloak.
On a fiend-like wind it curled along
Over the brave French ranks,
Like a monster tree its vapors spread,
In hideous, burning banks
Of poisonous fumes that scorched the night
With their sulphurous demon danks.
And men went mad with horror, and fled
From that terrible strangling death,
That seem to sear both body and soul
With its baleful, flaming breath.
Till even the little dark men of the south,
Who feared neither God nor man,
Those fierce, wild fighters of Afric's steppes,
Broke their battalions and ran;—
Ran as they never had run before,
Gasping, and fainting for breath;
For they knew 'twas no human foe that slew;
And that hideous smoke meant death.
Then red in the reek of that evil cloud,
The Hun swept over the plain;
And the murderer's dirk did its monster work,
'Mid the scythe-like shrapnel rain.
